--%>

Marketing Decisions & Profitability Assignment

Marketing Decisions

Assignment:  Email the answers to the following questions in an attached word document using the proper file name format as follows: 

1    Unfocused Books is a discount retail bookshop that has three departments: fiction, non-fiction and children's books. Sales and cost of sales for each department are shown below. In addition, each department has its own fixed costs for staffing and takes a one-third share of rental and management costs for the Bookshop as a whole.

 

Fiction

Non-Fiction

Children's

Sales

250,000

100,000

75,000

Cost of sales

45%

50%

55%

Departmental costs

50,000

35,000

35,000

Shared fixed costs

30,000

30,000

30,000

What is the profitability of Unfocused Books' three departments and what recommendations would you make to the owners?

2    Greentown Industries sells its transport services at a range of prices to five different customer groups. The company has fixed costs of £150,000 per year. The average variable costs for each transport service, irrespective of customer group, is £7. The Table below shows the prices charged to each customer group and the quantity of transport services that are currently sold at that price.

Customer group

Selling price

Quantity

Multinational

£19

13,000

Corporate

£20

12,500

Small business

£21

12,000

Government

£22

11,000

Private

£23

10,000

a.      If the average selling price is £21, calculate the breakeven point in quantity and money terms and draw a rough sketch of a cost-volume-profit (CVP) graph that shows the relationships between the elements of CVP.                                        

b.      Ignoring any market demand or capacity limitations, calculate the optimum selling price for Greentown Industries and identify which customer group is most profitable.

Use the following information to answer part (c)Assume that the maximum market demand for each customer group is 20,000 transport services at the same price as currently charged (see Table above).

Also assume that Greentown's capacity limitation is 60,000 transport services.     

c.       Based on the calculation of optimum selling prices in (b) above but with the capacity and demand assumptions taken into consideration, calculate the maximum profits that Greentown can earn and the customer mix and quantity by which that profit can be achieved.                  

3    General Consulting plc has four divisions, whose summary profit reports are shown below:

(in £'000)

I.T.

Finance

Strategy

M&A

Total

Income

1,200

1,700

900

1,500

5,300

Variable staff costs

600

900

350

600

2,450

Contribution margin

600

800

550

900

2,850

Fixed costs

471

885

804

490

2,650

Operating profit/(loss)

129

(85)

(254)

410

200

The senior partners are considering whether or not to continue with the Finance and Strategy consulting activities as these have consistently been loss-makers. The Chief Accountant has advised the senior partners that business-wide costs which are included in fixed costs total £1,200,000. Business-wide costs will continue irrespective of the closure of any division. Those costs are allocated to the four divisions in proportion to their income. The remaining fixed costs in each division are attributable to that division and cover the cost of staff whose expertise means that they can only work in that division. If a division is closed, these fixed costs would be avoidable.

  1. Present the financial information in a more meaningful form, showing the contribution each division makes to total profitability                       
  2. Ignoring any redundancy payments, advise the senior partners as to
  1. which, if any, divisions should be closed, and
  2. the likely profit, assuming constant sales, if those divisions were closed.

      c.    By re-presenting the financial information, explain the consequences to remaining divisional profitability if any division is closed.

 

 

   Related Questions in Corporate Finance

  • Q : Is Capital Cash Flow identical with

    Is Capital Cash Flow identical with Free Cash Flow?

  • Q : Weighted return and simple return to

    What is the difference between weighted return and simple return to shareholders?

  • Q : Briefly describe the financial services

    1 FINANCIAL SERVICES BY BANKS Financial system facilitates the transformation of savings of individuals, government as well as business into investment and consumption. It consists of

  • Q : Calculate their after tax cost of debt

    Your Corp, Inc. has a corporate tax rate of 35%. Please calculate their after tax cost of debt expressed as a percentage. Your Corp, Inc. has several outstanding bond issues all of whichrequire semiannual interest payments. Bond A has a coupon rate of 4.0%; a price qu

  • Q : Determine the future value What would

    What would the future value after 5 years of $100 be at 10% compound interest?

  • Q : What are flow variables Flow variables

    Flow variables: Any variable, whose magnitude is evaluated over a time period, is termed as glow variable.

  • Q : Operational efficiency and

    Distinguish between Operational efficiency and informational efficiency?

  • Q : Explain investment of bank for

    When my company is not listed, therefore the investment banks apply an illiquidity premium. In fact, they say this is an illiquidity premium but then they call this a small cap premium. Only one of the banks, apparently based upon Tit

  • Q : Explain influences of financial

    Does financial leverage (i.e. debt) have any influence on the Free Cash Flow, upon the Cash Flow to Shareholders, upon the growth of the company and upon the value of the shares?

  • Q : CAPM-Project Evaluation and Risk

    UCD Vet Products – a hypothetical publicly traded corporation (UCDV) — is considering investing in a new line of equine DNA analysis technology for race horse breeders. The project will yield the net cash flows listed in the table below. Assume that this p