Case Study-1

In 1990s Nestlé faced significant challenges in its market growth. Despite of the stagnant population in western countries the balance of power was increasing from large scale manufacturers like Nestlé, toward supermarkets and discounted chain stores. In result, Nestlé decided to lessen its focus on developed markets like North America and its home based market in Switzerland to emerging market like India and China. The driving force behind the decision of expanding its market share in emerging market is simple, as the population grows and government decisions favoring market economies brings attractive business opportunities for public living at intermediate income.

Although many of the counties are still living under poverty line, even living on $1 per day shows optimistic signs for the future markets. For example: as the current economic forecasts continues, there will be 9 billion people living on this planet as compare to today’s population of $7 billion today, and coincidently the increase in population is all in developing countries. Nestlé uses the strategy which correlates the ratio of increase in income to use of branded food products, which means as a person earns more and has less time for making food in his/her home, they will automatically substitute for branded products.

In general the company’s strategy has been to enter emerging markets early before its competitors and build a substantial customer base by selling products which suit the local population such as infant formula, milk, and noodles. Nestlé narrows down its market share to many small niche markets, as opposed to general or one for all strategies. Nestlé keeps the goal of commanding the niche markets by gaining at least 85% of market share in every food product it launches. For example, by pursuing such a strategy, Nestlé has taken as much as 85 percent of the market for instant coffee in Mexico, 66 percent of the market for powdered milk in the Philippines, and 70 percent of the market for soups in Chile. As the income level rises in each niche market, Nestlé introduces an upscale version of the same brand to increase its profit level. Although Nestlé has become a global brand, it uses local identity to gain exposure in local markets. The company owns 8500 brands but only 750 of them are known internationally.

Customization is the key to Nestlé’s global brand identity rather than universalism, which means Nestlé, uses global brand identity but, from the internal point of view, it uses local ingredients and other technologies that resonate with the local environment and brand name that is known globally. The customization of Nestlé’s products causes many hindrances in carrying out its distribution of products from local farmers to factories. For example, in Nigeria the infrastructure placed is crumbling, trucks are old and political conditions are not suitable to carry out the processes successfully, so Nestlé adopted a new strategy to deliver its products to local warehouses which are Loco convenient to local farmers for milk production. Although this might

seem as an expensive solution, the local farmers have tripled their milk production and the supply of milk, which Nestlé has calculated as beneficent for the long term growth.

The execution of the strategy matches the planning of the strategy which is to plan globally and implement locally. Nestlé gives autonomy to its local branches based in different countries to make pricing decisions, and distribution decisions. Nestlé has expanded its growth by diversifying its product base to tomato ketchup and wheat base products such as noodle and tofu. Nestlé has expanded into 5 countries and expects to supply all food products throughout the regions namely, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

Nestlé is also buying local companies in China and adapting its own portfolio for the Chinese market. Since many Chinese find coffee too bitter for their liking, Nestlé is working on a new “formula” to offer Smoovlatte, a coffee drink that tastes like melted ice cream. The company wants to be seen as a company that makes healthy food. As Janet Voûte, Nestlé’s global head of public affairs, said “it is a core business strategy”.

Nestlé has used its brand name as strength to generate sales and to expand its market share, which includes it customization of products to fit its target market’s profile. Although Nestlé has not always started from scratch, the company has used acquisition as a penetration strategy to expand and penetrate new international markets, which eliminates any local barriers to its competition. A few weaknesses which are related to the company’s quality measure resulting in product recalls. The company has decentralized its strategy units into 7 subunits in charge for different product lines, for instance, one – for coffee and beverages; another one focuses on ice cream and milk products. Nestlé brings its management level employees all around the world for 2-3 week training in its headquarters in Switzerland to familiarize them with their global culture, strategy and given them access to the company’s top management.

Answer the below questions:

Question 01: Based on the case study, elaborate the strategies adopted by Nestle in establishing global    brand identity in the local markets of various countries.

Case 3

In the 1980s and early 1990s, U.S. domestic automobile manufacturers, especially General Motors, were in turmoil. Dire headlines in business newspapers and magazines predicted a gloomy future: "Can GM Remodel Itself?" "May We Help You Kick the Tires," "Rude Awakening: The Rise, Fall, and Struggle for Recovery of General Motors," "GM Is Spreading the Gospel According to Toyota," "War, Recession, Gas Hikes . . . GM's Turnaround Will Have to Wait," "General Motors: What Went Wrong?" and "Can GM Fix Itself?" The list is endless. According to John F. Smith, Jr., chief executive officer and president of General Motors, "All of the well-publicized difficulties we faced in the past few years were in a sense the overdue wake-up call. GM's success had made it easy to ignore the significance of change and the signs of potential future problems." To try to solve its problems and increase competitiveness, in 1984 GM created a new division that focused on larger luxury cars-the Buicks, Oldsmobiles, and Cadillacs. The result was that by 1987 all the cars produced by this division began to look alike and buyers grew wary of GM's products. Cadillac buyers did not know why they were paying more for a car that looked just like GM's other less expensive models, like Buicks, and sales of Cadillacs plummeted. Realizing their mistake, GM's top management reorganized the company to give control of engineering and design back to the separate divisions. The Cadillac division benefited the most from this restructuring. To turn the division around, Cadillac was granted its own engineering team in 1988 and moved quickly to create a new identity for the line. Once again in control of its decision making, Cadillac managers lengthened the cars two inches, totally restyled them, increased advertising, and used direct mail to promote test drives. By 1990 Cadillac had gross profit margins of 40 to 50 percent, compared to 30 percent for the rest of GM's divisions. The Cadillac division had become very successful, launching redesigned models in 1991, 1992, and 1993. Their sales have been growing steadily, especially as the rising value of the yen has made Japanese luxury cars like the Lexus and Infiniti relatively expensive. In 1990 GM's Cadillac division won the prestigious 1990 Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award. According to David A. Garvin and Robert and Jane Cizik, professors of business administration at the Harvard Business School, the award "has become the most important catalyst for transforming American business." In 1992 GM introduced the very successful Cadillac Seville STS and successfully marketed the model against Toyota's Lexus and Germany's Mercedes. Even after all the improvements, however, the plant that produced the Cadillac Seville STS still ran at only 50 percent capacity. But Cadillac continued its leadership of the luxury car market for the forty-fifth year with 1993 sales again exceeding 200,000 units. What follows is the summary of remarks made by John Grettenberger, vice president and general manager of GM's Cadillac Motor Division, to the shareholders who attended the annual meeting on May 20, 1994. Our Cadillac team has come a long way, and we are now stronger than ever. We have been spending the last six years transforming our product to prepare for the challenges of the twenty-first century. Our quality and reliability have been recognized by customers and industry analysts. Recently Cadillac was named number one in vehicle dependability by J. D. Power & Associates, the industry analysts. It is the first time that a domestic car has topped that list. In a five-year ownership rating, Cadillac holds the number-1 ranking among the luxury cars. Cadillac was the only company in the industry to redesign its entire product line. Eight all-new models hit the market in just three years. The 1992 Seville and the Eldorado were first of the new generation to reach dealers, and 1992 Seville STS won the most prestigious awards in the industry, including the Motor Trend Car of the Year. In the following year, GM introduced the Northstar system to the Seville Touring Sedan and the Eldorado Touring Coupe, and the car won another fifteen editorial awards. The Northstar system has established Cadillac's tradition for innovation and technological leadership. Customers know the Northstar system by name and use it as a benchmark when comparison shopping. The year 1995 marked the eightieth anniversary of the first Cadillac V8, and eighty years later it is still setting the industry standards in power-train technology. Cadillac's world-class vehicle systems are the key to the sales success of the Seville and the Eldorado, and the model year sales have improved over 110 percent between 1991 and 1993. Continued improvement is expected for the 1994 model year. The Cadillac division has successfully attracted new buyers to Cadillac. The division made major inroads with young, affluent buyers who tend to prefer imports. The average age of buyers is decreasing. These young buyers, both male and female, are import-oriented and prefer sporty, contemporary cars with a feel-of-the-road handling. Two important new groups of Cadillac buyers are affluent women and African Americans. Cadillac is setting new standards for the capability, competency, and overall balance of the large luxury sedan with the introduction of the all-new 1994 Cadillac DeVille Concours. The DeVille Concours is a fully equipped, six-passenger sedan with Cadillac's exclusive Northstar system. The 270-horsepower Northstar V8 engine establishes the DeVille Concours as the most powerful front-wheel-drive, six-passenger sedan in the world. The DeVille Concours is newly designed, with comprehensive climate controls, precision instrumentation, ergonomically designed leather seating areas, and an all-new, eleven-speaker Delco Electronics Active Audio System. The base price? $37,990.

Questions:

1. Why was the U.S. automobile industry in a tailspin during the 1980s and the early 1990s?
2. What was GM's focus in 1984 to solve its problems? What were the results?

For each of the ethical situations described below, identify the specific tenet of the AHIMA Code of Ethics that has been violated, explain what is wrong with the action, and describe what the HIM professional should have done or said.

Hearing of a job in a hospital in the next town where the salary is better and the working conditions more pleasant, Erica Abbott, RHIA, applies for it. During her interview, she states that she earned her degree in a well-respected program. In reality, she spent only one year in that program before transferring to another program where she actually earned her degree. She secures the new position and, because the second hospital is very anxious to have her start work at once, places a letter of resignation under the door of the vice president to whom she reports in her current position, informing the VP that she will not be returning to the facility.

1. You purchase a $350,000 town home and you pay 25% down. You obtain a 30 year fixed rate mortgage with an annual interest rate of 6.25%. After 5 years you refinance the mortgage for 25 years at a 5% annual interest rate. After you refinance what is the new monthly payment?

2. You plan to purchase a $175,000 house using a 15-year mortgage obtained from your local bank. The mortgage rate offered to you is 7.75%. You will make a down payment of 20 percent of the purchase price.

(a) Calculate your monthly payments on this mortgage.

(b) Calculate the amount of interest and, separately, principal paid in the 60^thpayment.

(c) Calculate the amount of interest and, separately, principal paid in the 180^th(last) payment.   

(d) Calculate the amount of interest paid over the life of this mortgage.

For the next 4 questions, please read the description below.

A marketing company wants to know the mean price of new vehicles sold in an up-and‑coming area of town. Marketing strategists takes a simple random sample of 756 cars, and find that the sample has a mean of $27,400 and a standard deviation of $1300.

1. Assume that the population standard deviation is unknown. What is the error of estimate for a 95% confidence interval?

2. Assume that the population standard deviation is known to be $1500. What is the upper bound for a 98% confidence interval?

3. Assume that the population standard deviation is known to be $1500. Find the error of estimate for a 99% confidence interval.

4. Assume that the population standard deviation is known. If the marketing strategists want the 90% confidence interval to be within $50 of the population mean, how many cars at minimum should they sample?

A particular book publisher is thinking about starting up a new national magazine in a small town. It's thought that this publisher would have to get over 12% of the book market to be financially secure. While planning to launch this magazine, a survey was taken of a sample of 400 readers. After providing an inside look into this magazine, one question asked the participants if they would subscribe to this magazine if the cost didn't exceed $20 per month. Suppose that the number of participants that said they would subscribe is 58.

a. Can this publisher conclude that this proposed magazine will be financially feasible?

b. Suppose that the true value of the overall proportion of readers who will subscribe to this magazine is .13. Was the decision made in part a correct? If not, what type of error was made?

c. State the meaning of a type 1 and type 2 error in the content of this example. What would be the consequences of making these errors to the publisher?

PROGRAM SIMULATION.  Understand the given JAVA program and write the output.  

1.     public class Places

       {

           public static void main(String args[])

           {

                  String place[]=new String[4];          

place[0]="Salmaniya";

place[1]="Salmabad";

place[2]="Isa Town";

place[3] = “Manama”

        System.out.println(place[3]);

        System.out.println(place[1].toLowerCase());

        System.out.println(place[2].substring(4,6);

        System.out.println(place[3].charAt(4));

        System.out.println(place[1].equals(place[2]));

           }

}   

b.    public class ChangeIt

      {

          public void doIt( int[] z )

          {              

                         z[0] = 0;

           }    

      }

     public class TestIt

    {

          public static void main ( String[] args )

          {

                         int[] myArray = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5} ;

                         ChangeIt.doIt(myArray );

                         for (int j=0; j<myArray.length; j++ )

                                        System.out.print( myArray[j] + " " ) ;

          }

     }

We will do some basic data analysis on information stored in external files.

You will find the following data files in the Source Code -> Chapter 7 folder you should have downloaded already downloaded/unzipped in Lesson 3. If you need that link again:

Pyton4E_Source_Code.zip

GirNames.txt
contains a list of the 200 most popular names given to girls born in US from year 2000 thru 2009

BoyNames.txt
contains a list of the 200 most popular names given to boys born in US from year 2000 thru 2009

Hint: See Program 7-15 read_list.py for example of reading a file's contents into a list and using a loop to strip each \n

Here is the high-level algorithm (you still have work to do :)

open BoyNames.text for reading
read all lines into a list
close the file
while there are elements in list
strip the \n from each element
open GirlNames.txt for reading
read all lines into a list
close file
while there are elements in list
strip \n from each element
get user input for boy
get user input for girl
display result for boy's name entered by user (you need a decision structure as output depends on user input)
display result for girl's name entered by user (you need a decision structure as output depends on user input)

Input: a boy's name, a girl's name, or 'N' for none
Output: messages indicating whether the names were among the most popular

Note: Use a try/except to catch IOError
as anytime we deal with external files, problems may occur (file doesn't exist, we don't have permissions, disk is corrupted, and so on).

Sample Input/Output

IMPORTANT NOTE: The external files MUST be in same directory as your source code.

You may run your code on the command line/system prompt (as I have done) OR from IDLE (Run->Run Module or F5).

Here is first run showing output when user input for both boy and girl are popular names (user input shown in italics/bold ).

Enter a boy's name, or N if you do not wish to enter a boy's name: Michael
Enter a girl's name, or N if you do not wish to enter a girl's name: Emma
Michael is one of the most popular boy's names.
Emma is one of the most popular girl's names.

Here is a second run where user says 'N' to entering names

$ python babyname.py
Enter a boy's name, or N if you do not wish to enter a boy's name: N
Enter a girl's name, or N if you do not wish to enter a girl's name: N
You chose not to enter a boy's name.
You chose not to enter a girl's name.

Here is third run showing user input with a girl name not in the GirlNames.txt file:

$ python babyname.py
Enter a boy's name, or N if you do not wish to enter a boy's name: John
Enter a girl's name, or N if you do not wish to enter a girl's name: Ada
John is one of the most popular boy's names.
Ada is not one of the most popular girl's names.

Note: We will test code with THREE sample runs:

• First run uses the names Michael and Emma (see sample run above)
• Second run user enters N for both of the prompts (answer N for boys and N for girls)
• Third run we enter names of our choice but at least one is NOT popular.

this is what i did for this assignment but i got some error could you please help me with it

def main():
#open BoyNames.text for reading
infile = open('BoyNames.text', 'r')
#read all lines into a list
BoyNames = infile.readlines()
#close the file
infile.close()
#while there are elements in list
#strip the \n from each element
index = 0
while index < len(BoyNames):
BoyNames[index] = BoyNames[index].rstrip('\n')
index += 1
  

#open GirlNames.txt for reading
infile = open('GirlNames.txt', 'r')
#read all lines into a list
GirlNames = infile.readlines()
#close the file
infile.close()
# while there are elements in list
# strip \n from each element
index = 0
while index < len(GirlNames):
GirlNames[index] = GirlNames[index].rstrip('\n')
index += 1
  
#get user input for boy
try:
BoyName = input ("Enter a boy's name, or N if you do not wish to enter a boy's name:")
print (BoyNames)

GirlName = input ("Enter a gilr's name, or N if you do not wish to enter a girl's name:")
print (GirlNames)

except IOError:
print ("You chose not to enter a girl's name.")

  

main()

The average math SAT score is 517517 with a standard deviation of 112112. A particular high school claims that its students have unusually high math SAT scores. A random sample of 5050 students from this school was​ selected, and the mean math SAT score was 546546. Is the high school justified in its​ claim? Explain.

Rain Forest Inc. Imports fruit from Latin America and sells them in boxes to retailers in the U.S.

a) Today the company signed a contract with a major software company to purchase, customize, and implement an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Rain Forest is taking a loan from a bank of $3 million, which is the value of the ERP contract. The bank offers an APR (annual percentage rate) of 4.3% for 120 monthly payments. How much Rain Forest has to pay per month for the loan taken to purchase the warehouse?

b) A competing bank heard that Rain Forest will take a loan and made an offer that is supposedly more advantageous for Rain Forest than the loan described in (a). The competing bank is offering a $3 million loan to be paid back in 125 monthly payments of $30 thousand each. Assuming that Rain Forest wants the loan with the lowest APR, which loan should they take?

c) The cost of each box of fruit is $4.35. Rain Forest sells each box for $4.89 to retailers. Retailers buy 45,000 boxes per month. Considering that the only relevant fixed expense is the payment made each month for the ERP contract described in (a), show total revenue, total variable cost, fixed expenses, and profit (or loss) per month. Is Rain Forest profitable? If not, would Rain Forest be profitable if it decided not to implement the ERP system?
Tip: be careful with the signs, especially if you are referencing a result from item (a)!

d) Considering the price in c), build a table that shows total revenue for several quantities of boxes. Your table should show revenues for quantities varying from 40,000 to 60,000 in steps of 2,000. The result should be a table with 2 columns (quantity and revenue), and 11 rows (one for each quantity).

e) Considering the cost and fixed expense in c), add a column to the table above that is (total variable cost + fixed expense with ERP).

f) Add a line chart with one line for total revenue, another line for (total var. cost + fixed expense with ERP), and quantity sold in the horizontal axis. Based on the chart, what is the quantity the company needs to sell to break-even? How would the break-even quantity change if the ERP system cost 20% less?

g) Considering the variable cost and fixed expense in c), build a table that shows profit (or loss) for several quantities of boxes and prices per box. Your table should show profits for quantities varying from 40,000 to 60,000 in steps of 2,000, and prices varying from $4.79 to $5.19 in steps of $0.05.

h) For a selling price of $4.89 per box, what is (approximately) the quantity of boxes that Rain Forest needs to sell to break-even? Is this quantity the same as the one you found in the chart? (It should.)

i) For a total quantity of 50,000 boxes per month, what price (approximately) does Rain Forest need to charge per box to make a profit of more than $3,600 per month?