Question

A company is planning a plant expansion. They can build a large or small plant. The payoffs for the plant depend on the level of consumer demand for the company's products. For the large plant, the company expects $90 million in revenue if demand is high and $40 million if demand is low. For the small plant, the company expects $55 million in revenue if demand is high and $20 million if demand is low. The cost of the large plant is $5 million. The small plant cost is $1 million.

The company believes that there is a 72% chance that demand for their products will be high and a 28% chance that it will be low.

Construct a payoff and regret matrix based on the given information.

What is the decision according to the EMV criterion? Be sure to support your answer.

Is your decision sensitive to the demand assumptions given for this problem? You may answer generally, such as “very sensitive” or “not very sensitive” as long as you support your answer.

The company can pay a market research firm to survey consumer attitudes towards the company's products. The market research firm cost is $100,000. The market research firm has provided the following cross tabulation showing recent results.

	High Demand	Low Demand	Total
Favorable	.66	.10	.76
Unfavorable	.06	.18	.24
Total	.72	.28	1

Construct a decision tree for this problem showing when the survey is conducted but the plant has not been built. Include all relevant probabilities on the tree and all EMVs needed.

What is the expected value of the market research survey data?

Should the market research firm be hired at a cost of $100,000? Be sure to support your answer.

Answer 1