1. Read the examples below, and specify which mode you would recommend. If you choose intermodal, specify the combination of modes that you would use.

2. When designing a network of distribution centers to serve a large market, like the U.S., it is common to debate the number of facilities to use. Discuss the following.
   • What arguments would you use to support having many facilities? What assumptions did you make to support your analysis?
   • What arguments would you use to support having fewer facilities? What assumptions did you make?
   • Which business functions (departments) are likely to support each of these positions (i.e., having more or fewer facilities)?

How does the availability of third-party providers influence your decision?

How can employees deal with their conflicting and confusing emotions in workplace situations that require constant positive or upbeat behavior and appearance? When customers count more than employees, what happens to self-esteem? Should we, for instance, adopt different perspectives toward those in the airline industry, given that gender relations and constructions of gendered identities have changed?

A production process consists of a three-step operation. The scrap rate is 19 percent for the first step and 7 percent for the other two steps.

a.If the desired daily output is 455 units, how many units must be started to allow for loss due to scrap? (Do not round intermediate calculations. Round up your final answer to the next whole number.)

Number of units            

b.If the scrap rate for each step could be cut in half at every operation, how many units would this save in terms of the scrap allowance? (Do not round intermediate calculations. Round up your final answer to the next whole number.)

Number of units            

c.If the scrap represents a cost of $10 per unit, how much is it costing the company per day for the original scrap rate (i.e. the Part a scrap rate)? (Round your final answer to the nearest whole number. Omit the "$" sign in your response.)

Cost           $  

Discuss the phrase “let the buyer beware” and its relationship to an ethical marketing perspective.

in 300 words

The Allure of Franchising

Neil Erlich knew that he wanted to be an entrepreneur when he helped start a contracting business when he was just 14 years old. During his junior year at Sonoma State University, Erlich, with help from his father, a corporate executive, began investigating franchise options that would suit his interests and skills. They honed in on the automotive service industry and reviewed the regulations of several franchises, including Total, Jiffy Lube, and Midas, before settling on Express Oil Change. Erlich was particularly impressed with the support that Express Oil Change offered its franchisees. When Erlich graduated with a business degree, his father put up $375,000 to help him purchase and set up the $1.5 million franchise operation. Erlich, who is the youngest franchisee in the Express Oil Change system, sees the franchisor’s support as one of the greatest benefits of choosing to open a franchise rather than an independent business of his own.” The franchisor is there for you," he says. "It’s very comforting. "

Like Erlich, a growing number of college graduates and twenty-something adults who are disenchanted with the prospects of a dull job in the corporate grind are looking to franchising as a promising career choice. Indeed, franchising is attracting people of all ages and backgrounds, from corporate dropouts and military veterans to retired Baby Boomers and corporate castoffs.

” People say, ’I put 20 years into a company, and because they ran into some tough times, they let me go,’” explains Ray Titus, head of the United Franchise Group.” They think, ’Do I want to put myself into a position where I may get laid off again?’ Instead, they take control of their future by running their own businesses." For many of them, franchising is the perfect fit.

Retirees who are looking for second careers also are turning to franchising as well. "They’ve got school-of-hard-knocks experience and business skills that they can apply on day one at a franchise," says Michael Shay of the International Franchise Association. Judy Divita, a retired corporate human resources manager, and her husband Charlie, a retired college professor and consultant, decided to embark on second careers as franchisees rather than stop working. After researching franchise opportunities, they opened a Subway franchise in Columbia, South Carolina, not far from where Charlie had taught at the University of South Carolina. Over the next nine years, the Divitas opened five more sandwich shops in Columbia, including one on the university campus. In addition to their built-in market of college students, they target the players on the athletic teams that come to campus to participate in more than 400 sporting events ranging from baseball and football to basketball and volleyball each year. The Divitas have won the MVP Award Winner for Innovation from Multi-Unit Franchisee magazine. Their nine outlets generate $4.5 million in annual sales, and the couple’s goal is to have 13 Subway locations within 10 years.” The franchise gives you the basic things to put you in business pretty quickly," says Charlie.” You have to take it beyond that and be creative to come up with novel ways of doing things that are particular to your company and your community.”

Franchising can be the ideal path to owning a business for people in almost any phase of professional life, whether they are retirees looking for a new direction and extra income or recent college graduates who are ready to embark on exciting careers. "Boosted by a brand name, training, advertising, and an established business plan, a franchise can ease the struggle and the risk of opening a business and still let you call some shots,” says one business writer.

1. These examples show people at different stages of their professional lives choosing to become business owners with the help of a franchise. What conclusions can you draw from their stories about the benefits and appeal of franchising? (300 words – 40- marks)

2. What are the disadvantages of investing in a franchise? (200 words – 30 marks)

3. Suppose that one of your friends who is about to graduate is considering purchasing a franchise. What advice would you offer him or her before signing the franchise contract? (200 words – 30 marks)

1. Calculate a lower bound for the number of workers required to complete the project in 26 days. [2 ????]
2. Use the precedence table to draw an activity-on-arc network. Include the early and late times for each event. [8 ?????]
3. Which activities are critical [2 ?????]?
4. Find the critical path for the network. [2 ?????]
5. Calculate the float of each activity [6 ?????]
6. What is the total float activity? [3 ?????]
7. Draw a Cascade (Gantt) charts to represent the project [5 ?????]
8. . It is possible for 4 workers to complete activity C in 5 hours. [2 ?????]
9. Would you recommend this approach? Fully explain your answer. [2 ?????]

What measures should a developing country put in place to ensure that the weakening currency does not have an effect on growth?

Anggur,s applied for a credit facility from bank kismis BhD for the financing of a new invention of a household utensil ,

due to uncertainties of anggur,s product and other credit consideration ,kismis Bank BHD Decline to grant the

facilities , except at the rate of interest which is more higher than the market rate ,anggur,s accept the facility of these

terms if anggur,s default in payment , can he be alleged that bank kismis BHD has forced or forced on pressured him

to accept the facility at such a high interest rate and therefore the contract is voidable at his option?

What do you understand by risk management decisions? Give your opinion on each decision. Are they perfect to manage the risks?

Please suggest most recent one advanced material products.
1. Specific properties of the product
2. The key characteristic/properties of selected advanced material product
3. Engineering Technology of selected product
4. Market role of the product

In your opinion, what are the benefits of starting a business? What do you think are the contributions of small/medium businesses in the Canadian economy? Can you think of any other profession/field where similar benefits might be offered?

Question 4: Discuss how the steps of the Buyer Decision Process are being used by Netflix to satisfy existing and prospective customers by their product offerings. (10 marks – allow ~15 minutes)

Netflix Case: Netflix Uses Technology to Change How We Watch Videos

When Netflix was founded in 1997 in the United States, the movie rental giant Blockbuster had thousands of stores from coast to coast, filled with video cassettes ready for immediate rental to customers (Pride et al., 2018). Netflix had a different vision from this well-established, well-financed competitor. Looking at the recent development of DVD technology, Netflix saw an opportunity to change the way consumers rent movies. The entrepreneurial company built its marketing strategy around the convenience and low cost of renting DVDs by mail, for one low monthly subscription fee.

Instead of going to a local store to pick out a movie, subscribers logged onto the Netflix website to browse the DVD offerings and click to rent. Within a day or two, the DVD would arrive in the customer’s mailbox, complete with a self-mailer to return the DVD. And, unlike any other movie rental service, Netflix customers were invited to rate each movie on the Netflix website, after which they’d see recommendations tailored to their individual interests (Pride et al., 2018).

Fast-forward to the 21^st century. Video cassettes are all but obsolete, and Blockbuster, once the dominant brand in movie rentals, has only one remaining shop in the US as consumer demand has shifted to digital distribution for entertainment (Porter, 2019). In Australia, both Blockbuster and Video Ezy still had a brand presence in 2018 (Pride et al., 2018). Since then, Blockbuster’s last Australian shop closed in March 2019 (Porter, 2019), and Video Ezy exists in the form of vending machines (kiosks) after its shops closed (Rosenberg, 2018).

Both brands have been prompted to reassess their distribution channels. You may notice more DVD rental kiosks such as “Video Ezy Express” popping up in convenient locations, including outside supermarkets and shopping complexes, in a bid to improve brand reach and accessibility. DVD rental kiosks, like online services, are accessible around the clock and reduce many store costs, including wages.

In contrast, by completely eliminating the need for brick-and-mortar stores or kiosks, Netflix has minimised its costs and extended its reach to any place that has postal service and Internet access (Pride et al., 2018). The company still rents DVDs by mail (Monahan & Griggs, 2019), but it has also taken advantage of changes in technology to add video streaming on demand.

Now, customers can stream movies and television programmes to computers, television sets, videogame consoles, DVD players, Smartphones, and other web-enabled devices. One advantage to the company is that streaming a movie costs Netflix less per customer than paying the postage to deliver and return a DVD to that customer.

Netflix’s Use of Technology: From Data-Tracking to Streaming

Netflix made technology a core competency from the very beginning. Because the business has always been web-based, it can electronically monitor its customers’ online activity and analyse everything that customers view or click on.

With this data, Netflix can fine-tune the website, determine which movies are most popular among which market segments, prepare for peak periods of online activity, and refine the recommendations it makes based on each individual’s viewing history and interests. The company also uses its technical know-how to be sure that the website looks good on any size screen, from a tiny Smartphone to a large-screen television.

A few years ago, planning for a significant rise in demand for streaming entertainment, Netflix decided against investing in expanded systems for this purpose. Instead, it arranged for Amazon Web Services to provide the networking power for streaming (Pride et al., 2018).

By 2018, on a typical night in the US, Netflix streaming occupied up to 20,000 servers in Amazon data centres (Pride et al., 2018). Demand was so strong by that time, in fact, that Netflix streaming accounted for about one-third of all internet traffic to North American homes during the evening (Pride et al., 2018). This percentage is only expected to increase. The Australian market, however, may pose technological hurdles, as the National Broadband Network is still being rolled out and is not available in all areas, meaning that accessibility may not be as straightforward as it is in America (Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications, n.d.).

Although Blockbuster and Video Ezy are no longer a competitive threat in their traditional form, Netflix does face competition from Amazon’s own video streaming service, Amazon Prime Video, which headed to Australia and New Zealand’s shores in 2017 (Pride et al., 2018).

Other direct competitors include well-established Hulu, YouTube, Nine Entertainment, and

Fairfax media’s joint-venture Stan, and Foxtel’s movie-streaming service Presto. It also competes with other entertainment providers, including cable, satellite, and broadcast television. Foxtel, for example, has dramatically reduced its basic cable packages in an effort to retain its share of the market in face of increasing competition from on-demand services (Pride et al., 2018).

Netflix Offers Exclusive Programming to Customers

To differentiate itself from its competitors, Netflix commissioned exclusive programming such as House of Cards, Arrested Development, and Orange is the New Black. The cost to produce such programs runs to hundreds of millions of dollars (Pride et al., 2018). Between May–December 2019, Netflix added 179 original programmes to its American streaming service, or an average of 30 new shows a month, or about one show per day (Fruhlinger, 2019). Netflix plans to continue pouring money into exclusive content because of the payoff in positioning, positive publicity, and customer retention.

The way that Netflix releases its exclusive programming reflects its in-depth knowledge of customer behaviour. The company found through its data analysis that customers often indulge in ‘binge watching’ for a series they like, viewing episodes one after another in a short time.

Based on this research, in 2013 Netflix launched all 13 episodes of the inaugural season of House of Cards at one time, an industry first (Pride et al., 2018). Executives gathered at headquarters to monitor the introduction, cheering as thousands of customers streamed episode after episode. By the end of the first weekend, many customers had watched the entire series and shared their excitement via social media, encouraging others to subscribe and watch. When Netflix won multiple Emmy Awards for House of Cards, it was another first—the first time any Internet company had been honoured for the quality of its original programming.

One key measure of Netflix’s growth is the strong increase in the number of monthly subscribers. In 2015, Netflix had about 70 million subscribers worldwide, of which 26 million were located outside the US (Pride et al., 2018). In 2019, Netflix had 151 million paid subscribers worldwide (158 million if free trials are included) (Kafka, 2019).

Despite the brand only launching in Australia in March 2015, it already has close to 2 million subscribers in 2018 (Pride, 2018). By July 2019, Netflix had more than 11.6 million subscribers in Australia, up 18% from the year prior (Gruenwedel, 2019) Its closest direct competitor, Stan, had 2.6 million subscribes in early 2019 (Knox, 2019).

Netflix will not say how many subscribers that it has in New Zealand, but a recent survey of 1,000 people, commissioned by the Office of Film and Literature Classification and carried out by UMR Research, found that 72% of respondents subscribed to Netflix. Of the same respondent sample, 77% said they watched television shows and movies using a paid online service (Kenny, 2019).

Keys to Netflix’s successful launch include offering free-trials and access to stripped-back free versions, as well as continued investment in original programming. It appears that streaming is the new broadcasting, and that ‘on-demand’ spells the demise of scheduled entertainment.