A STUDY OF THE STICKINESS OF COST OF GOODS SOLD AND OPERATING COSTS TO CHANGES IN SALES LEVEL IN IRAN

Increased competition in domestic and foreign markets has made managers to identify their costs structure and behavior better. Cost behavior is a model based on which costs response to changes in level of activity. Having invented stickiness of costs model by Anderson and Janakiraman (2003), managers are able to better predict costs behavior when increases and decreases are occurred in sales. Using above model, this research examines behavior of cost of goods sold as well as general, administrative and selling costs and studies the degree of stickiness of these costs given to decreased sales in past year and the ratio of total assets to sales. Statistical universe of the research is listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange for a period of 10 years (2001-2010). The results indicate that cost of goods sales isn’t sticky to changes in sales however general, administrative and selling costs (SG&A costs) increase by 0.443% when there is 1% increase in sales level while 1% decrease leads to 0.261% reduction. The results also indicate that stickiness degree of SG&A costs is lower in periods previous which decreased sales were occurred and the ratio of total assets to sales as a factor of companies’ size does not effect on stickiness degree of these costs.