Managerial Economics *****Questions & Answers

Q1. Price rise at the Daily Mirror
Sly Bailey, the Trinity Mirror Chief Executive, sought to boost revenues of the Daily Mirror
in 2004 by increasing the price of the tabloid newspaper by 3p, from 32p to 35p. The move is
a sharp U-turn of the policy of Philip Graf, her predecessor, who tried to boost Daily Mirror
circulation by cutting the cover price, triggering a price war with its rivals The Sun and the
Daily Star. Ms. Bailey ended the price war as soon as she took over at Trinity Mirror in 2003.
The Daily Mirror will now cost 5p more than the The Sun, which is owned by News
International, parent company of the Times. It appears that The Sun has no immediate plans to
increase its price. The Daily Mirror last increases its price in September 1999 but the tabloid
newspaper market in the UK is fiercely competitive and it’s not clear what the effect on its
circulation will be.
Question:
1. What price elasticity of demand issues are raised in this case study?
(20 Marks)
Q2. Data response Questions:
The demand and supply schedules of good X are given below in the table below.
(20 Marks)

Px ($)      Quantity demanded      Quantity supplied
1                  120                                         0
2                 100                                         20
3                 80                                           40
4                 60                                            60
5                  40                                           80
6                20                                            100
A) Define what is meant by the quantity demanded and the quantity supplied
B) What is the equilibrium price and quantity?
C) What would be the excess demand or supply if the price were:
i. $2
ii. $6
D) If there was an increase in income and the product was an inferior good what would
be the equilibrium price and quantity if 20 units less were demanded at each price?

Q3.

Price ($)          Quantity demanded per week       Quantity supplied per week
20                         20                                                                      0
40                         16                                                                       4
60                         12                                                                       8
80                         8                                                                        12
100                       4                                                                        16
a) What is the price elasticity of demand when the price increases from $40 to $60?
b) What is the effect of a price increase from $40 to $60 on the total revenue?
c) Calculate the price elasticity of supply following a price increase from $60 to $80
(20 Marks)
Q4. The Government has various tools available to deal with the Market Failure. List at
least major 8 tools and substantiate your answers? (20 Marks)

Q5. What are the factors that causes an increase (rightward or upward shift) in demand
and supply? (Write down at least 8 points) (10 Marks)

New Venture Development in Qatar

This assignment suppose to be group work but I decided to do it independently.
I will attach a dropbox link to access to all documents needed to this assessment.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/x0gpjc5o6dlz74t/AAAj95VHaZpWRY47GkGevIaRa?dl=0
Also beside the essay 1500 word (±10%) I need to do a presentation 5min so I will request powerpoint slides, as you see the essay should be around 1500 words, but I did the order for 2500 words, essay 1500 + 1000 presentation speech.
Using 12 font, 1.5 line spacing.
Note: if the 1000 words and 6 powerpoint slides too much for 5min presentation, feel free to reduce them to be enough for 5min, this won’t effect the order fee.

Key Aspects of Simon School Brand

QUESTION 1

Briefly describe what you believe are the key aspects of Simon School brand. Given this brand description, discuss one action that the school takes that helps build/maintain the brand. Discuss one action that the school takes that hurts the brand. Discuss a potential marketing activity that would help build the brand. Actions related to increasing awareness only cannot be discussed.

QUESTION 2

For a brand of your choice, briefly describe what you believe the brand is and answer two (2) of the following questions:

• Does the brand’s spokesperson build the brand?
• Does the brand’s packaging build the brand?
• Does the brand’s logo build the brand?
• Does the brand’s slogan build the brand? 

QUESTION 3

Ashton Kutcher has taken a job as a product engineer/spokesperson for Lenovo (the attached article provides a few scanty details).  Discuss the potential pros and cons to Lenovo of aligning its brand with Mr. Kutcher.

Article:

Meet Lenovo’s newest product engineer: Ashton Kutcher

October 30, 2013, 9:39 AM

Getty Images

Ashton Kutcher at the Yoga tablet launch in L.A.

First he played a tech guru. Now he’s ready to try it out in real life.

Ashton Kutcher, star of Hollywood biopic “Steve Jobs”, has signed up as a product engineer at Lenovo /quotes/zigman/21902/realtimeHK: 992 /quotes/zigman/346332/delayed/quotes/nls/lnvgyLNVGY to “develop and market” its new line of Yoga tablets.

Kutcher — a would-be biochemical engineer, let’s not forget — will help the Chinese PC maker “break new ground” with his “input and decision-making into design, specifications, software and usage”, Lenovo said on Tuesday.

First up for the “Two and a Half Men” star, though, was a role onstage demoing the Yoga at its Los Angeles launch, with his Lenovo company badge proudly on show. He’s also done a video promo for the tablet.

Note that hiring a celeb is a tried-and-tested move in the tech world: Think Will.i.am at Intel, Alicia Keys at BlackBerry (yeah, that really worked) and Lady Gaga at Polaroid. All enlisted for “creative” roles — and probably in hopes some of their glamour will rub off on product lines.

But it’s clear Kutcher is aware of the brickbats that might be coming his way.

“I’m an actual product engineer,” he told Wired. “I know that’s hard for people to understand because so many of these [celebrity endorsements] have been vanity products. I actually am less interested in the color of the phone or tablet than in how it works.”

Kutcher does have a track record in tech. He’s an investor in a bunch of online service providers — Airbnb, Foursquare and Spotify, among others — and is behind Thorn, a foundation that uses digital tools to combat the sexual exploitation of children.

With that kind of resume, he may well be able to give Lenovo some tips.

– Karen Friar

Xen Inc is a Raleigh based manufacturing and marketing company that markets three product groups in Asia Europe and North America

Xen Inc. is a Raleigh based manufacturing and marketing company that markets three product groups in Asia, Europe and North America. The product groups are: washers, dryers, and ovens. Xen management is happy regarding the financial and quality performance for dryers and ovens, but is not satisfied with washers. Washer has been the bread and butter product line for the company and contributes over 50% of the company’s total revenue until 2017. 70% of washer sales have been in the US market which management thinks is not very profitable. The rest
of around 30% of washer sales which are overseas seems to be doing well.
Total number of washers sold has been down by 15% for 2018 and 12% for 2019, taking 2017 sales as the base line. Profit from washers has gone down by 16% in 2018 and 15% in 2019 compared to 2017 numbers. The reasons for these seem to be:
Prices had to be lowered three times during the last two years due to entry of cheap Korean and Chinese brands in the US market, Costs for production, distribution, and overall inventory maintenance have gone up compared to cost level of 2017, Several customer complaints have been received for Xen washers, Rejection rates at inspection stations in the company have been increasing, and On analysis, it has been found that the cost to manufacture the Korean washer is around 80% of Xen washer’s cost.
Assume that Xen management hired you on February 10, 2020 as the Director of Operations for their washer division to solve problems and improve the business based on your impressive background and expertise in Lean manufacturing, Lean Enterprise, quality assurance, technology project management, inventory planning, CIM, strategy formulation, investment and cost analysis.
The Xen board of directors and CEO are very impressed by your first progress report of April5, 2020 ( assume it is a normal business situation, COVID 19 epidemic is not there). Your report includes quality, productivity and cost improvement recommendations for the washer product division. You have clearly stated that the recommendations will solve most of the problems and substantially improve business. You have also mentioned that the recommendations will be fully implemented in 12 months, along with the conducting of a follow up study on performance indices. Further you have indicated that you would like to have the kickoff date for your recommendations as January 25, 2021. You have included various appendices on the various work elements of the project supported by relevant data that you have compiled based on one month study and analysis on various manufacturing, quality, procurement, distributions, customer complaint related documents. Based on the
above, prepare your report to answer the following questions:
1. List your recommendations for making improvements. Prepare a project activity relationship and flow chart, and create a critical path to complete the work within your planned time horizon.

2. Show costs (assume based on your experience or collect from outside by conducting some research) for each project work element. Include costs for training of personnel in Lean principles, emerging, and new technologies ( as relevant) .
3. Estimate total cost of implementing your recommendations with appropriate overhead and overruns.
4. Assume market price for a washer (you may collect from on line sources or estimate based on your experience) and assume a 15% profit in the price. Consider Xen manufactures and sells 750 washers /week. Show cost benefit analysis for implementing your recommendations with appropriate assumptions.
5. Conduct a value stream mapping analysis for the production steps based on the process flow diagram that you envisioned and given below. Estimate overall throughput, % rejection/scrap, reliability, %VAT, % employee efficiency, and other applicable metric as appropriate. In the diagram shown below: SM1, SM2, SM3 represent machines in the sheet metal line, OTH1, OTH2, etc., represent other items lines, and AS1,
AS2, etc., represent the assembly line. Consider production target quantity mentioned in question 4).
6. Prepare an envisioned future state value stream map. Assume working days, shift hours, and breaks to show and compute the value stream related measures.
7. Assume Xen wants to make and sell 900 units per week in 2021. Estimate steps and strategy that you will recommend to comply with the increased demand. Consider option of adding automated machinery (including FMS, automated conveyors, etc.) or sub-contracting manufacturing to Korea, China, or some local company.
8. To reduce cost of inputs you may decide your strategy from options of getting components from Korea, China or India, or you may decide to develop a Lean approach based on partnering relationships with your current suppliers to reduce costs. Show plans, steps, and justification for each strategy.
9. Describe your planned steps/action plans to improve production process quality to obtain 0% rejection from manufacturing (compared to current as may be obtainable from flow diagram below) and zero customer complaints. At present Xen Inc. have at least 5 complaints per month that you reported in an appendix of your April 5, 2020 report.
10. Assume that you plan to implement Statistical Process capability (SPC) and monitor process capability. Explain the steps that you will take to implement SPC using an example. Show your obtained SPC based on your assumed data and analysis for the example.

11. Prepare a comprehensive list for quality, productivity, and cost improvement steps that you included in steps 3-8. For each step include appropriate metric.

Business Communications Persuasion Letter

Rental Car

You are the supply chain manager for your company, and last month your work required you to travel to Germany. When you arrived at the Frankfurt Airport, you rented from Auto-Rent, Inc. a Volkswagen Passat for six days. You had no problems or accidents with the car and returned it October 23 full of gas. When you checked it back in at the end of the six days, the agent checked the car and did not find any damage.

Now, three weeks later, you receive an email from Auto-Rent, Inc. stating that your credit card has been charged 220 euros for damage to the left-rear side panel of the car. The email includes a picture of the damage, which looks like another vehicle scraped the panel. Auto-Rent justifies the charge by saying that the receiving agent overlooked the damage during the check-in process, but discovered the problem later when the vehicle was going to be rented by someone else.

Fortunately, you took 8 pictures of the car’s exterior with your smartphone when you returned the car. The date of the photos on your smartphone is October 23—the date you returned the vehicle. Your photo of the left-rear side panel shows no damage. Write an email to Auto-Rent, persuading them to remove the charges. Attach a copy of the photo as evidence (you may just assume that the photo copy is attached or take a photo with your smart phone and attach that.) You are not sure how well the receiver of your email speaks English. Apply the principles you learned in chapters 2-4 of Writing and Speaking for Business
When you do the assignment, I expect the letter to look like a letter – not just one long paragraph. Also, when writing letter, you should apply OABC, which we previously discussed.

O – Opening
A – Agenda
B – Body
C – Closing
http://www.writingandspeakingforbusiness.com/blog/oabc-a-pattern-for-clear-business-communication

link to explaining OABC