Inside Costco's Counterintuitive Profit Engine: How $1.50 Hot Dogs and Membership Fees Built a Retail Giant

Inside Costco's Counterintuitive Profit Engine: How $1.50 Hot Dogs and Membership Fees Built a Retail Giant

In an era when retailers struggle with razor-thin margins and fierce competition from e-commerce giants, one warehouse club has mastered a seemingly paradoxical business model: sell products at near-cost while generating billions in profit. Costco Wholesale Corporation has built an empire on deep discounts, unchanged prices on iconic products like the $1.50 hot dog combo that hasn’t budged since 1985, and a fiercely loyal customer base willing t…