In production, research, retail, and accounting, a cost is the value of money that has been used up to produce something, and hence is not available for use anymore. In business, the cost may be one of acquisition, in which case the amount of money expended to acquire it is counted as cost. In this case, money is the input that is gone in order to acquire the thing. This acquisition cost may be the sum of the cost of production as incurred by the original producer, and further costs of transaction as incurred by the acquirer over and above the price paid to the producer. Usually, the price also includes a mark-up for profit over the cost of production.
More generalized in the field of economics, cost is a metric that is totaling up as a result of a process or as a differential for the result of a decision. Hence cost is the metric used in the standard modeling paradigm applied to economic processes.
Costs (pl.) are often further described based on their timing or their applicability.
Read more about Cost: Types of Accounting Costs, Comparing Private, External, Social, and Psychic Costs, Cost Estimation, Path Cost, Manufacturing Costs VS. Non-manufacturing Costs
Famous quotes containing the word cost:
“Greeting people doesn’t cost you anything except a roll of your tongue.”
—Chinese proverb.
“Every new stroke of civilization has cost the lives of countless brave men, who have fallen defeated by the “dragon,” in their efforts to win the apples of the Hesperides, or the fleece of gold. Fallen in their efforts to overcome the old, half sordid savagery of the lower stages of creation, and win the next stage.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)