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The Global Insight

What is an example of diminishing marginal utility in real life?

Author

Robert Miller

Updated on February 26, 2026

Food is a common example of a good with diminishing marginal utility. Think of an apple, for example. If you’re starving, an apple offers pretty high value. But the more apples you eat, the less hungry you become — Making each additional apple less valuable.

What is an example of diminishing marginal product?

Diminishing marginal productivity can also involve a benefit threshold being exceeded. For example, consider a farmer using fertilizer as an input in the process for growing corn. Each unit of added fertilizer will only increase production return marginally up to a threshold.

What is an example of the law of diminishing marginal returns?

For example, if a factory employs workers to manufacture its products, at some point, the company will operate at an optimal level; with all other production factors constant, adding additional workers beyond this optimal level will result in less efficient operations.

How can the law of diminishing returns be explained with a real life example?

A farmer owns a certain amount of land and can use fixed amounts of seeds, water and human labor. However, they can increase the amount of fertilizer they use to increase production yield. As the amount of fertilizer used increases, the same land will produce a better crop than before.

What is diminishing marginal utility in your own words?

Diminishing marginal utility is the decrease in satisfaction a consumer has from the consumption of each extra unit of a good or service. Put simply, with diminishing marginal utility, satisfaction decreases as consumption increases.

What is marginal utility in simple words?

Marginal utility is the added satisfaction a consumer gets from having one more unit of a good or service. The concept of marginal utility is used by economists to determine how much of an item consumers are willing to purchase. Marginal utility can be positive, zero, or negative.

When total product is diminishing marginal product is?

With diminishing marginal product, the total variable cost increases at an increasing rate. Total costs is the sum of total fixed costs and total variable costs, thus total cost begins at the level of fixed costs and is shifted up above the total variable cost by the amount of the fixed cost.

Why is marginal product negative?

Finally, after a certain point, the marginal product becomes negative, implying that the additional unit of labor has decreased the output, rather than increasing it. The reason behind this is the diminishing marginal productivity of labor.

What do you mean by diminishing marginal utility?

The Law Of Diminishing Marginal Utility states that, all else equal, as consumption increases, the marginal utility derived from each additional unit declines. Marginal utility is derived as the change in utility as an additional unit is consumed. Utility is an economic term used to represent satisfaction or happiness.