The Manhattan jurors in Room 1523 were grappling with the Rockefeller drug laws as they battled over the fate of the defendant, Calvin Baker, who was facing a sentence of four to nine years in prison if convicted as a repeat drug seller.
Many purchases of differentiated goods are repeated, giving sellers the opportunity to engage in price discrimination based upon the shopper's previous behavior by either offering loyalty discounts to repeat buyers or introductory rates to new customers.
"The strength of our company is obviously the repeating best-seller writers, and we have them as we always do," he said, naming Tom Clancy, Lillian Jackson Braun, Jayne Ann Krentz, W. E. B Griffin, Nora Roberts, Clive Cussler and Katherine Coulter among others.
Some buyers prefer to do repeat business with sellers simply because they know that those sellers deliver.
But the Consulting Group, the managed-money division of Salomon Smith Barney, suggests in a recently released study that if history repeats itself, today's sellers could be kicking themselves in 10 years.
If the site does more to promote highly rated merchants in its search results, she said, it will help such sellers find more repeat customers.
But it is hardly a secret that an agent may accept a 5 percent listing if the seller is a repeat customer, a friend or family member, or buying through the agent as well as selling.
The best marketplaces tend to be for frequently purchased items with a diverse quantity of sellers and few repeated interactions.
