&gt;  I am also NOT an economist so I have a rather limited perspective.<p>No worries, and thanks for responding.<p>&gt;  Personally, I would consider public perception outside of a traditional &quot;market&quot; model...but like I said, I am by no means an economist. Another external market force would be government regulation (take for example the recent government laws forcing retirement investors to put their clients first).<p>Speaking as an economist, I&#x27;d say it&#x27;s pretty standard for economists to consider public perception (brand value) to be part of the decision-making model. In fact, it&#x27;s essential - plenty of decisions can&#x27;t be explained rationally unless you account for intangible assets and revealed preferences.<p>Likewise, it&#x27;s common for non-economists to think of government regulation as an exogenous force, but from an economic perspective, government action is very much a component of the market - it exists as part of the market, not outside it.<p>&gt; Companies can only sell products to people that can afford them, so by keeping wages low, they are actually pricing themselves out of the market.<p>This is a common talking point among advocates of wage floors (e.g. &#x27;minimum wage&#x27;), but you&#x27;d be hard-pressed to find an economist who agreed with that statement as written, even if you&#x27;re looking only at economists who already advocate for wage floors. (There are some economists who advocate for wage floors, but rarely using that line of reasoning). Labor economics is a complex subfield, though, (not to mention politically charged these days), so I&#x27;ll just say that companies do price in risk-adjusted expected future costs (just not always with complete or accurate information, or with the outcomes one might <i>like</i>), and leave it at that.