So I know how supply and demand works in factories. It's pretty simple.
But retail is where it gets a bit confusing. I'm playing in Survival Mode, and the importance of retail mechanics becomes even more important in a newly developing city. I think I have an idea of it, here is what it looks like to me:
Purchasing unit
Supply and Demand: This is about the link between the factory and the shop. If demand is higher, the factory can't supply enough goods. If the supply is higher, the factory can supply enough goods.
Utilization: Low utilization can mean 1. there isn't high demand from costumers so retail doesn't purchase from factories much 2. the factory can't supply enough goods thus the purchasing unit can't buy at maximum capacity. I suppose a purchasing unit that serves two sales units would see high utilization if the factory supply and customer demand is high enough.
Sales unit
Supply and Demand: Maxed-out demand means the customers want to buy more than this sales unit can handle.
Utilization: Low utilization means customer demand isn't high or the purchasing unit can't supply enough goods. Maxed-out utilization means the sales unit is selling as much as it can. High demand but low utilization means the factory can't supply enough goods.
So, if the demand and utilization is high, the sales unit can't handle all the customer demand. A way to fix this would be starting a second sales unit in the same retail (possibly by using the empty space in the middle) or opening a new retail with the same goods. When I build a new retail, the sales revenue sometimes decreases. I think this is because with the opening of a second retail, there is now more sales units than necessary. Since the customers have more locations to shop at, some of the revenue is transferred to the new retail shop. This would mean I'm not actually selling less, I'm just selling the same amount or more city-wide, distributed between two retails. By looking at the amount of loss in the old retail, one can predict how much customer demand was not fulfilled.
But sometimes the revenue doesn't decrease. I believe this is because the unrealized potential was so high, even two selling units couldn't match all the customer demand. So the old retail doesn't see a drop in revenue because it is still selling at 100% capacity. With the second retail, I'm now selling twice as much city-wide (in theory).
Market share won't reflect any of this. Since there is no local suppliers for some time until the city develops, even if you sell only ten units of anything, you have 100% market share because you are the one selling all ten of that item.
There isn't a way to know how high the customer demand is. You can look at utilization and demand to understand that the demand is high, but you don't know the amount of sales you are missing out on. If there is a way to learn this data, I haven't found it.
Sometimes Sales demand is high, but utilization is low. No idea what that means.
This is purely based on my observation and I'm not sure if it's all true. If I have a wrong understanding can anyone correct me? I'm struggling under a massive debt at the moment and every dollar counts lol.