Assignment: Case Study Economics
Choose a company to research. The company can be either a publicly-traded company or privately-owned, perhaps a company you are familiar with (but not your current employer). The key elements in choosing a good company for your case study are:
o Is the company relatively easy to research? Is there plenty of available information on the inner-workings of the firm?
o Is it a company you're interested in and/or do you like their product or service? (This will make it more fun.)
o Is the company newsworthy? (Perhaps they've had a stunning failure, legal issue or maybe they recently created a killer product everyone wants.)
Once you have picked a company, post your company to the final case study paper discussion forum - week 4. No two students can pick the same company and approval will be given on a first come-first assigned basis.
Note that for a large, multi-line or multi-product company, you may want to choose a single business line within the firm for your analysis. For example, with Apple, you would concentrate on their iPhone business only or with Google/Alphabet you would concentrate on just their driverless car project. You will find it much easier to focus your business analysis on one business line within a large diversified company.
Your final case study paper should be 6-8 pages and will consist of 5 sections (each about 1.5-2.0 pages).
The first section should be an overview of the company:
o What does the company do?
o What product or service does it offer?
o Where is it located?
o Who are its main competitors?
o What is the market structure (e.g. pure competition, monopoly, oligopoly, etc.)?
o How is it regulated?
This first section should provide a background or base-line understanding of the company in support of the rest of the paper.
For the remaining four sections, should include the following:
o A demand analysis illustrating the most applicable terms, concepts, or ideas in Chapter 3 to include the following - consumer behavior (purchasing power and substitution effect), targeting, switching cost, positioning, price elasticity of demand (demand determinants), interpreting income and advertising elasticity.
o A pricing analysis illustrating the most applicable terms, concepts, or ideas in Chapter 14 to include the following - value in use/value based pricing (product specifications, ease of use, service frequency, change order responsiveness, loyalty programs, and empathy in order processing), couponing, bundling, price discrimination, and price skimming versus full-cost pricing.
o A "What they got wrong" analysis detailing a strategy mistake using the course concepts.
o A "What they got right" analysis detailing a strategy win using the course concepts.
If you are having trouble addressing or finding enough information for any of the sections above, you can augment your analysis by articulating what you think the company should do. For example, if you can't find any information on your company's value based pricing, explain how you would price the product or service and why. This is Organizational (managerial) Economics; make some decisions on behalf of your company and support them using concepts and ideas from the course!
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
o The answer should be typed, using Times New Roman font (size 12), double spaced, with one-inch margins on all sides.
o The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
o Also include a reference page. The Citations and references must follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.