CASE 2

Pandora is the Internet’s most successful subscription radio service. In May 2014, Pandora had 77 million registered users. Pandora accounts for over 9 percent of total U.S. radio listening hours. The music is delivered to users from a cloud server, and is not stored on user devices. It’s easy to see why Pandora is so popular. Users are able to hear only the music they like. Each user selects a genre of music based on a favorite musician or vocalist, and a computer algorithm puts together a “personal radio station” that plays the music of the selected artist plus closely related music by different artists. The algorithm uses more than 450 factors to classify songs, such as the tempo and number of vocalists. These classifications, in conjunction with other signals from users, help Pandora’s algorithms select the next song to play. People love Pandora, but the question is whether this popularity can be translated into profits. How can Pandora compete with other online music subscription services and online stations that have been making music available for free, sometimes without advertising? “Free” illegally downloaded music has also been a significant factor, as has been iTunes, charging 99 cents per song with no ad support. At the time of Pandora’s founding (2005), iTunes was already a roaring success. Pandora’s first model was to give away 10 hours of free music and then ask subscribers to pay $36 per month for a year once they used up their 10 free hours. Result: 100,000 people listened to their 10 hours for free and then refused to pay for the annual service. Facing financial collapse, in November 2005 Pandora introduced an ad-supported option. In 2006, Pandora added a “Buy” button to each song being played and struck deals with Amazon, iTunes, and other online retail sites. Pandora now gets an affiliate fee for directing listeners to sites where users can buy the music. In 2008, Pandora added an iPhone app to allow users to sign up from their smartphones and listen all day if they wanted. Today, 70 percent of Pandora’s advertising revenue comes from mobile. In late 2009 the company launched Pandora One, a premium service that offered no advertising, higher quality streaming music, a desktop app, and fewer usage limits. The service costs $4.99 per month. A very small percentage of Pandora listeners have opted to pay for music subscriptions, with the vast majority opting for the free service with ads. In fiscal 2013 Pandora’s total revenue was $427.1 million, of which $375.2 million (88 percent) came from advertising. Pandora has been touted as a leading example of the “freemium” revenue model, in which a business gives away some services for free and relies on a small percentage of customers to pay for premium versions of the same service. If a market is very large, getting just 1 percent of that market to pay could be very lucrative— under certain circumstances. Although freemium is an efficient way of amassing a large group of potential customers, companies, including Pandora, have found that it is challenging to convert people enjoying the free service into customers willing to pay. A freemium model works best when a business incurs very low marginal cost, approaching zero, for each free user of its services, when a business can be supported by the percentage of customers willing to pay, and when there are other revenues like advertising fees that can make up for shortfalls in subscriber revenues. In Pandora’s case, it appears that revenues will continue to come overwhelmingly from advertising, and management is not worried. For the past few years, management has considered ads as having much more revenue-generating potential than paid subscriptions and is not pushing the ad-free service. By continually refining its algorithms, Pandora is able to increase user listening hours substantially. The more time people spend with Pandora, the more opportunities there are for Pandora to deliver ads and generate ad revenue. The average Pandora user listens to 19 hours of music per month. Pandora is now intensively mining the data collected about its users for clues about the kinds of ads most likely to engage them. Pandora collects data about listener preferences from direct feedback such as likes and dislikes (indicated by thumbs up or down on the Pandora site) and “skip this song” requests, as well as data about which device people are using to listen to Pandora music, such as mobile phones or desktop computers. Pandora uses these inputs to select songs people will want to stick around for, and listen to. Pandora has honed its algorithms so they can analyze billions more signals from users generated over billions of listening minutes per month. As impressive as these numbers are, Pandora (along with other streaming subscription services) is still struggling to show a profit. There are infrastructure costs and royalties to pay for content from the music labels. Pandora’s royalty rates are less flexible than those of its competitor Spotify, which signed individual song royalty agreements with each record label. Pandora could be paying even higher rates when its current royalty contracts expire in 2015. About 61 percent of Pandora’s revenue is currently allocated to paying royalties. Advertising can only be leveraged so far, because users who opt for free ad-supported services generally do not tolerate heavy ad loads.

CASE 2 QUESTIONS:

1. What type of e-commerce is Pandora? What is Pandora’s ecommerce business model? Explain your answer?

2. What ecommerce revenue models are Pandora using? How does Pandora generate money with the revenue models? Explain your answer?

3. For Pandora, what business strategies are being supported by the use of data mining? Explain your answer.

Income Statement and Balance Sheet

Green Bay Corporation began business in July 2017 as a commercial fishing operation and a passenger service between islands. Shares of stock were issued to the owners in exchange for cash. Boats were purchased by making a down payment in cash and signing a note payable for the balance. Fish are sold to local restaurants on open account, and customers are given 15 days to pay their account. Cash fares are collected for all passenger traffic. Rent for the dock facilities is paid at the beginning of each month. Salaries and wages are paid at the end of the month. The following amounts are from the records of Green Bay Corporation at the end of its first month of operations:

1. Using the data given, prepare an income statement for the month ended July 31, 2017.

2. Using the data given, prepare a balance sheet at July 31, 2017.

3. While assessing the long-term viability of the Notes Payable, which of the following would you least consider?

) A researcher recruited 2100 men in his research and followed up every year for 4 years to find out the incidence rate of respiratory disease.

After 1 year, there was not a new diagnosis of respiratory disease, and 100 lost to follow up,

After 2 years, found one new case of respiratory disease and 99 lost to follow up,

After 3 years, found 7 new cases of respiratory diseases and seven hundred ninety three lost to follow up.

After 4 years, found eight new cases of respiratory diseases and three hundred ninety two lost to follow up.

Calculate the incidence rate of respiratory disease

(**new cases of respiratory disease and men lost to follow up were disease-free for six months) ** and contribute ½ years to the denominator)

How can managers create value by establishing important relationships among the value chain activities; within the firm and between the firm and its customers and/or suppliers?

SLUGGING PERCENTAGES & BATTING AVERAGES - SENTINEL LOOP

Develop a program in JAVA that will determine the slugging percentages and batting average of several New York Yankees from the 2006 season.  Slugging percentage is calculated by dividing the total number of bases by the number of at bats.  The number of bases would be one for every single, two for every double, three for every triple, and four for every home run.  The batting average is calculated by dividing the total number of hits by the number of at bats.  You do not know the number of players in advance, but for each player you know their number of singles, doubles, triples, home runs, total number of at bats, and the player's name (use the proper type and method for each variable).

You will use a while sentinel loop on the 1st item to input.  If it is not the sentinel, go into the while sentinel loop and separately input the rest of the input items (be careful of the enter in the input memory buffer for the player name).  You will then calculate the total bases and the slugging percentage.  You will then calculate the batting average.  You will then print out the player's name, the labeled slugging percentage for that player to three decimal places, and the labeled batting average for that player to three decimal places.  Use separate output statements.  Print a blank line between players.  This loop will repeat for as many players as you need.

Run your program with the following players and sentinel value (to show the sentinel value worked):

Singles:  158

Doubles:  39

Triples:  3

Home Runs:  14

At Bats:  623

Player:  Derek Jeter

Singles:  51

Doubles:  25

Triples:  0

Home Runs:  37

At Bats:  446             

Player:  Jason Giambi                                                                                                          

Singles:  104

Doubles:  26

Triples:  1

Home Runs:  35

At Bats:  572             

Player:  Alex Rodriguez                                                                  

Singles: -1

This is refering to Cell Biology:

Discuss how the common functions of proteins contribute to the different properties of a living cell

Discuss how covalent and non-covalent interactions contribute to the 3D conformation of a protein

How do the properties of the selectively-permeable cell membrane dictate which types of molecules cross the cell membrane?

The paper “Outcomes at School Age After Postnatal Dexamethasone Therapy for Lung Disease of Prematurity”, New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 350, reports the outcomes at school age in children participating in a trial of an early postnatal therapy for preventing chronic lung disease of prematurity. All of the infants in the study had severe respiratory distress syndrome requiring mechanical ventilation shortly after birth. The attached dataset ‘Child_IQ’ contains the IQs of 74 randomly selected children from the study. Use the technology of your choice to answer the following question:

Give a 95% confidence interval for the standard deviation of IQ scores for children in the study group. ANS:  (10.8, 15.0)

The following tables list the ages of female and male actors when they starred in their award-winning Best Actor performances. (A graphing calculator is recommended.)

Ages of Best Female Actor Award Recipients

Ages of Best Male Actor Award Recipients

(a) Find the mean and the sample standard deviation of the ages of the female recipients. Round each result to the nearest tenth.

(b) Find the mean and the sample standard deviation of the ages of the male recipients. Round each result to the nearest tenth.

(c) Which of the two data sets has the larger mean?

female actors or male actors    

Which of the two data sets has the larger standard deviation?

female actors or male actors    

broadway hotel inc a clendar year corporation purchased land on which to build a small resort in los gatos. the land was purchased on 12-1-10 for 255000. (which included the price of a small shed of the property, 33500, which was torn down in December at a cost of 5000. the company began to build the resort on 12-1-10 paying 852000 to a contractor. further payments to the contractor were on 7-1-11 for 650000 and on 9-1-11 for 710000. on 12-1-11 the resort was ready to be rented out, but the company merely began to advertise the resort and found only a few paying customers to rent it to in 2011. during 2010, the Company had borrowed 3800000 at 8% on 1-1-10 (maturing 2022) specifically for this building project. the company also had a long term bond for 2000000 (liability) on its books from 2006, and due in 2017, which it was paying 9% interest but no other long term liabilities. what is the book value of the land? what is the book value of the building on 12-1-11?

a) In order to meet the industrial and environmental demands and challenges posed by the rapidly developing technological advancement, and promotion of sanity in the country, and in the world at large, it is necessary to create and develop the awareness and interest of Civil Engineering students who are to become the future middle level manpower in the Construction Industry. According to Harris et al (2006:13), quality control is “a set of activities or techniques undertaken to ensure that all quality requirements are being met”. In order to achieve this purpose, processes are monitored. Coin a comprehensive definition of quality control to this effect.

b) Civil Engineering students are introduced to the principles and importance of quality control. Effectiveness of quality control in any given company cannot be quantified by customers. The variability of quality control results often lead to the loss of competitive edge. If this is limitation, then explain.

c) Administration and site work during a contract can be divided into many important areas which require some degree of control, the ultimate responsibility for which lies with the site manager. Examine the various aspects in a building project where quality could be determined.. AN,