From the perspective of long-run product costing, which cost of capacity should
Stassen use for pricing purposes or for benchmarking its product cost structure against
competitors: $90 per unit based on practical capacity or $135 per unit based on masterbudget
capacity utilization? Probably the $90 per unit based on practical capacity. Why?
Because $90 per unit represents the budgeted cost per unit of only the capacity used to
produce the product, and it explicitly excludes the cost of any unused capacity. Stassen’s
customers will be willing to pay a price that covers the cost of the capacity actually used
but will not want to pay for unused capacity that provides no other benefits to them.
Customers expect Stassen to manage its unused capacity or to bear the cost of unused
capacity, not pass it along to them. Moreover, if Stassen’s competitors manage unused
capacity more effectively, the cost of capacity in the competitors’ cost structures (which
guides competitors’ pricing decisions) is likely to approach $90. In the next section we
show how the use of normal capacity utilization or master-budget capacity utilization can
result in setting selling prices that are not competitive.