At every one of these points the psychological experiment may find a foothold, and only through such methodological study can the haphazard proceedings of the commercial world be transformed into really economic schemes.  Indeed, it seems nothing but chance that just this field is controlled by chance alone.  The enormous social interplay of energies which are discharged in the selling and buying of the millions becomes utterly planless as soon as salesman and customer come into contact, and this tremendous waste of energy cannot appear desirable for any possible interest of civilization.  The time alone which is wasted by useless psychophysical operations in front of and behind the counter represents a gigantic part of the national budget.  Even the complaints about the long working day of the salesgirls might be eliminated from the debit account of the national ledger, if the commercial companies could study the psychical processes in selling and buying with the same carefulness with which they analyze all details in preparing the stock and fixing the prices.  In the army or in the fire department, in the railroad service, and even in the factory, all necessary activities are so arranged that as far as possible the greatest achievement is secured by the smallest amount of energy.  But when the hundreds of millions of customers in the civilized world want to satisfy their economic demands in the stores, the whole dissolves into a flood of talk, because no one has taken the trouble to examine scientifically the psychotechnics of selling and to put it on a firm psychological foundation.

The idea of scientific management must be extended from the industrial concerns to the commercial establishments.  The questioning and answering, the showing and replacing of the goods, the demonstrating and suggesting by the salesmen, must be brought into an economic system which saves time and energy, as has been tried with the laborer in the factory.  Wherever economic processes are carried out with superfluous, haphazard movements, the national resources have to suffer a loss.  The single individual can never find the ideal form of motion and the ideal process by mere instinct.  A systematic investigation is needed to determine the way to the greatest saving of energy, and the result ought to be made a binding rule for every apprentice.  How the smallest influences grow by summation may be illustrated by the experience of a large department store, in which the expense for delivery of the articles sold was felt as too large an item in the budget.  The hundreds of saleswomen therefore received the order after every sale of moderate-sized articles not to ask, as before, “May we send it to you?” but instead, “Will you take it with you?” Probably none of the many thousand daily customers observed the difference, the more as it was indifferent to most of them whether they took the little package home themselves or not.  In cases in which it was inconvenient, they would anyhow oppose the suggestion and insist that the purchase be sent to them.  Yet it is claimed that this hardly noticeable suggestion led to a considerable saving in the following year, distinctly felt in the budget of the whole establishment.