Clearly there are people on this thread who have no concept of retail pricing. I’ve managed hardware and jewelry stores, and spent 2 decades as a territory manager specializing in adjusting retail prices based on price sensitivity and turnover. The more expensive an item is generally, the lower percentage the markup is. The cheaper an item is the higher percentage the markup is, unless it’s a price sensitive item - good examples are milk, bananas, bread, etc. Most people know what that item should sell for and, as such, regardless of whether it’s cheap or pricey, there’s less margin in it.
Using diamonds as an example - a mall or chain store, due to higher overhead, 99 times out of a 100, cannot sell to you as cheaply as a source that has only one or zero retail outlets. Same holds true for audio stores. The same principles of price sensitivity and markups apply, but the brick and mortar stores have to factor their costs of multiple locations rented, more employee hours, etc into their prices - and either lower their markups to match the online sellers or be too high priced if they don’t.
Using diamonds as an example - a mall or chain store, due to higher overhead, 99 times out of a 100, cannot sell to you as cheaply as a source that has only one or zero retail outlets. Same holds true for audio stores. The same principles of price sensitivity and markups apply, but the brick and mortar stores have to factor their costs of multiple locations rented, more employee hours, etc into their prices - and either lower their markups to match the online sellers or be too high priced if they don’t.