what is marginal cost 
marginal cost is the change in production cost from producing or making one additional unit you can find it by dividing the change in production costs by the change in quantity produced if the price per unit is higher than the marginal cost a business can make a profit tracking marginal costs allows businesses to achieve economies of scale the bottom linemarginal utility is the amount of additional satisfaction that a consumer gets from having one more unit of a good or service this amount can be positive negative or zero when marginal utility equals zero or becomes negative the consumer will stop buying because the value of what they are buying has stopped increasing as an economic concept marginal utility can be used by businesses to understand customer behavior set prices for goods and services and decide which products to innovate or upgrade marginal utility is also used in economics to justify progressive taxes according to marginal utility each additional dollar is more valuable to those with lower incomes because they have fewer dollars in total for those with higher incomes the marginal utility of each additional dollar of income is lower this is an application known as the law of diminishing marginal utility 