A thought for PopCorn!

Alright, so you go for a movie with you friends and during the interval you buy a bag of pop corn... cost to you is Rs 35 per small bag! You think that's a whooping lot, but you want to munch something; so you buy it anyway! Later you you come home and tally your expenses of the day and you think back "hey, I just spent 35 bucks on pop corn! Wait a minute, something is really wrong here! Am I insane?" And if you're an economics student, it hits you harder probably. Remember we learnt when commodities are scarce, their prices are high. Simple reason - demand for commodities is more than the supply for them. So when you equate this demand- supply lesson from your school to the POP CORN, it doesn't make sense suddenly. There never seemed to be scarcity of popcorn in the theatre! So now you ask yourself why is it so heavily priced? May be you would argue that factors like the theatre has to pay salaries, electricty, the one-thousand taxes we have, rent and so on which gets included in the selling price of the popcorn. Okay, given these need to be added to the selling price, but does it warrant charging 35 bucks from each and every person who comes to buy popcorn and other million items they have?
Lets do some basic calculations... corn seeds will not cost any more than few pennies, and they don't even need too much labour for pop the seeds (afterall we see the huge machines popping the corn). So now you realise they are marking up the popcorn bag by more than 200%!!! And inspite of that, everyone's still buying this popcorn! You could probably buy a 10 buck pouch of ready to pop corn and make it at home! But that would make you look too stingy if you carried home made popcorn to the movies right?
So now you break your head and wonder what is it that makes people buy popcorn at such a hefty price? Various factors - a lot of people will look at it from the marketing point of view. Lets look from the economics point of view. Those guys at the theatre are able to price it at 35 bucks because we as public are ready to pay for it. Doesn't make much sense? Look at it from our point of view. It is because we are insensitive to the price tags put up in the theatre and henceforth willing to pay any sum they charge us, that the theatre is able to take a large chunk of your money in a single movie you come to watch! Those who do not wish to pay will get their own food, or not have anything at all from the cafeteria. So the choice is ours. There are no demand and supply factors working here, there is no big marketing happening here either. The theatre starts selling the popcorn at 25 bucks first following other theatre's examples. It later realises that people don't bother about the prices, so it hikes the prices. Still there is no change in the number of popcorn eaters. Running a theatre is like any other business. And every business' aim is to maximise profits. When people are willing to pay more (obviously there are no signs of demotivation) why not cash in that extra profit?
Does that mean we all should stop eating popcorn in the theatre (and instead carry our own)? Well, NO! It's not without any reason that you're being charged 35 bucks! If the theatre had a better bargaining capacity, it would have charged 100 bucks (remember monopoly?) But it can't charge that much either! Enter demand supply lessons!