Discretionary costs are costs that may be deferred to a future period without creating a significant impact on operations in the current period. Discretionary costs may or may not be relevant to future decisions.
Marginal costs are the addition to total cost that results from a one-unit change in production or the addition to total cost that would result from a project that is under consideration. Marginal costs are relevant to future decisions.
Sunk costs are past costs that have been incurred and are not relevant to any future decisions.
Under absorption costing, fixed factory overhead costs are allocated to the units produced during the period according to some predetermined ratio and are therefore a product cost. Absorption costs may or may not be relevant to future decisions.
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