The customer can make that decision without seeing margins. While I generally argue in favor of transparency, I think this would end up incentivizing the wrong things.
There's a lot of examples of industries where the price of the actual materials used is not as important as the expertise/training/tools of the person who assembles/installs/prepares/etc it. A policy encouraging consumers to make decisions on margin would would favor companies that skimp on their employees and punish those who are smart about their materials costs. Ultimately, it could end up encouraging wastefulness and inefficiency.
Say you’re a country store in Alaska 300 miles from the nearest town with active business. You have a plane. You bring in goods once in a while. You add what seems a hefty margin.
In those situations I don’t see it as excessive—of course it would be contextual. And some of this is case-by-case.
There's a lot of examples of industries where the price of the actual materials used is not as important as the expertise/training/tools of the person who assembles/installs/prepares/etc it. A policy encouraging consumers to make decisions on margin would would favor companies that skimp on their employees and punish those who are smart about their materials costs. Ultimately, it could end up encouraging wastefulness and inefficiency.