This game I found to be interesting. Making people happy is easy - give them their dream jobs. This only helps to give you a few extra TowerBux. To make money and more floors, simply build a residential floor, and look at the people in there once you add them in. Lets say 3 have creative personalities or higher levels in creativity. Make a creative floor next. Keep checking the app every 15 minutes or so and keep restocking every store. Having fully restocked floors will give you extra cash and TowerBux.
It takes AGES, let me tell you. I have 107 floors and it took months. Just be VERY patient and continue stocking as much as you can.
Does this mean it's possible to play with my device's clock and
manipulate the game time?
Yes. There is no punish for this as I have done this before to test the theory.
Your items will sell out, you will make gobs of money, and build times would be shortened (obviously).
Does the game try to "punish" you at all for doing this?
Yes, since version 2.0, when ever the game detects that the time was moved backwards, one of the bitizens will be lost due to "a horrific time traveling accident". The bitizen is chosen randomly, so It can be a bitizen occupying a dream job.
Also, be careful of when you chose to revert the time back. If you build / start to stock items and then revert back to the correct time, it will show the total stocking time = stocking time + time skipped ahead.
To avoid this, do not stock items and then move back to the correct time. Let all stocking finish, or skip the time forward till the stocking is completed.
One other issue I seem to have was that no more customers will come by your stores....
This is fixed by closing out the application completely and reopening it.
Best Answer
I play TT Now and again and the only thing I can think is that your staff don't have enough skill. Try to have people in their "dream job" or at least the correct field ( same colour ) . Not only does this reduce the cost of stock ( from memory, I don't have it installed right now ) by a max of 27% (9 for each staff that is 9 in that colour) but I believe it also increases their selling rate.