In: Economics
The company that you manage has invested $5 million in developing a new product, but the development is not quite finished. At a recent meeting, your salespeople report that the introduction of competing products has reduced the expected sales of your new product to $3 million. If it would cost $1 million to finish development and make the product, you go ahead and do so. The most you should pay to complete development is
million.
In economics, the lessons about the decision making of an individual include that individuals face trade-offs, cost of an activity is the opportunity cost give up, individuals make rational decisions by comparing marginal benefit and marginal cost, and individual change behavior according to the incentives.
A company has invested $5 million for development of new product. The company came to know that other competing products in the market could reduce the expected sales by $3 million. Now, the company has to decide whether it should make the product by investing $1 million. In this case, the amount invested ($5 million) is sunk cost because it is invested irrespective of the completion of the development project. The company will lose $5 million if the development project is not complete. On the other hand, the company will lose $6 million ($5 million of sunk cost plus $1 million of additional investment) and gain $3 million if the development project is complete. Thus, the net loss with the completion of the development project is $3 million. Hence, the company will be better off by investing an additional $1 million because the loss will be reduced by $2 million.
The maximum amount the company should pay to complete the development project is $3 million. This is because if $3 million is invested to complete the development project then the company could lose $5 million (loss to quit development). But, if the future sales increases then the company could earn more profit.