Scenario: Imagine you are a business consultant to a firm of your choice. You have been asked to analyze, advise, and create recommendations on how the firm can ensure its future success in its current market.

Work with your instructor to choose a firm that matches the following criteria: a publicly-traded company operating in the U.S. market. Note: A publicly-traded company is a private-sector firm owned by its shareholders/stock holders.

Prepare a minimum 1,050-word analysis of economic data and business data to explain how the core economic principles impact the sustainability of the firm and what actions the firm can take to ensure success.

Address the following: Identify the market structure your chosen firm operates in, analyze your chosen firm's current market share, and identify the firm's local/global competitors.

Analyze the barriers to entry in this market to illustrate the potential for new competition and its impact on your firm's future in the market. Hints: Be sure you review the barriers to entry discussed in the course text.

You might consider presenting the data graphically. Identify and explain trends in current macroeconomic indicators for last three years including: Current stage of the business cycle. Real gross domestic product (GDP). Inflation as measured by the consumer price index (CPI). Unemployment rate. Federal funds rate. Current rate for borrowing funds such as the so-called "prime rate."

Note: A requirement of the Week 1 Influence of Economics on Household Decision Making report was to gather data on the CPI, GDP, and interest rates, so you should consider reviewing the feedback you received on the Week 1 report.

Evaluate trends in demand over last three years and explain their impact on the industry and the firm. Include quarterly (last two quarters) and annual sales (last three years) figures for the product your firm sells.

Create business strategies by analyzing information and data related to the demand for and supply of your firm's product(s) to support your recommendation for the firm's actions. Remember to include a graphical representation of the data and information used in your analysis. Examine available, current data and information, such as pricing and the availability of substitutes, and explain how you could determine the price elasticity of demand for your firm's product.

Assess how the price elasticity of demand impacts the firm's pricing decisions and revenue growth. Apply the concepts of variable and fixed costs to your firm for informing its output decisions. For instance, analyze how different kinds of costs (labor, research and development, raw materials) affect the firm's level of output.

Based on the data gathered and analysis performed for this report, write a conclusion in which you: Create business strategies, including price and non-price strategies, based on your market structure to ensure the market share and potential market expansions and explore global opportunities for your business in a dynamic business environment and provide recommendations. Develop a recommendation for how the firm can manage its future production by synthesizing the macroeconomic and microeconomic data presented.

Propose how the firm's position within the market and among its competitors will allow it to take your recommended action. Recommend strategies for the firm to sustain its success going forward by evaluating the findings from demand trends, price elasticity, current stage of the business cycle, and government policies.

1) Tuya Miya puts 10,000 euros in a savings account that pays 5% annually. She wants to buy a 20,000 euro car with her savings. With this investment plan, how many years will it take her to reach her goal?

2)To save for her newborn son's college education, Kelli Peterson will invest $1,500 at the end of each year for the next 18 years. The interest rate she expects to earn on her investment is 9%. How much money will she have saved by the time her son turns 18?

3)To save for the purchase of a boat, Nelson plans to save 200 per month into a savings account that pays 5% annually. How much will he have available for the boat after 10 years?

4)Siim Bemoll is told by his bank that his 20,000€ car loan at 5% will have installments of 377.42€ per month. What will be the balance due after the first monthly instalment is paid?

5)How much interest will Siim Bemoll pay on his second installment of his 20,000€ car loan at 5% with installments of 377.42€ per month?

6)You finance your purchase of your home with a loan for 120,000 euros in 20 years at 3% with monthly payments. You plan to buy a new car five years from now so it would be good to know how much will you owe to the bank for the house at that time. What will be the outstanding loan at that time?

7)Jeff is 60 now and has one million euros in the bank. According to demographic estimates in his country, his life expectancy is 82 years but he is healthy so he is sure to live another ten more years after that. He decides to retire now and live off his savings, for which he can get 5% annual returns. What level of annual income can he expect to receive in order to support himself until he dies?

8)You want to retire 30 years from now with 5 million euros in your pocket. Your Personal Finance professor recommends to you an infallible financial product that will accumulate profits of 15% each year. How much per year do you have to invest in this product to reach your goal?

9)Jack is 35 years old and is planning to retire at age 65. Based on a variety of factors, he is planning a retirement of 20 years. Jack determines that he will need $20,000 during his 20 years of retirement. If he can invest at 9 percent, how much will he need to save each year beginning today to reach his goal?

10)A retirement plan promises to pay an annual salary of 50,000€, indexed to inflation up to 2%, and to invest the remaining funds at 6% annually, during 20 years. To provide for the initial funds how much would you have to save?

Deliverable: Word file with explanation of your work, calculations, final result. You may choose whether to use tables or formulas with the calculator (as appropriate), but it is advisable to do both so that you get some practice and mutually check the correct results. You can even double check your results by using Excel on the side.

Using Linux in VirtualBox

To display your system date:

1. Type date in the command line, and press Enter. What do you see?                                           

You might see the abbreviation EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) instead of EST (Eastern Standard Time), or another time zone abbreviation, such as MDT (Mountain Daylight Time) or CST (Central Standard Time). Notice also that UNIX/Linux uses a 24-hour clock.

2. Type Date in the command line, and press Enter. What error do you see?                                   

The system error message appears because you must enter the date command, like most Linux commands, in lower-case letters.

To display your system date in UTC:

1. Type date –u in the command line, and press Enter. What do you see?                                                                                       

Using the cal command

In this, you use the cal command to display the current calendar, a Julian date calendar, and the historical calendar for July 1776.

To use the cal command:

1. Type cal in the command line, and press Enter. What calendar do you see?                                                                                                                    
2. Type cal –j 2018 in the command line, and press Enter. What type of calendar appears?                                                                                     
3. To determine the day of the week when the Declaration of Independence was signed, type cal 7 1776 in the command line, and press Enter. Record the calendar you see:                                                                                                                         In this case, the month and year are the command arguments. On which day of the week did the Fourth of July fall?                       
4. If you type cal july 1776, what do you see?                                                       

Using the who command

The who command is valuable for determining who is currently logged in to a system. In this, you try out the who command using several options.

To use the who command to determine who is logged in to the system:

1. Type who in the command line, and press Enter.
2. You see a list showing user names, the terminals they are using, and the dates and the times they logged in. Record your observation:                                                                                
3. To display a line of column headings with the who command’s output, type who –H and press Enter.

In case any current users are logged in from a remote host, the COMMENT column shows the name of the host.

4. Idle time is the amount of time that has elapsed with no activity in a user’s session. Type who –u and press Enter to see each user’s idle time. Record your output:                                                                                                                                                                                         
5. If you want to use multiple options on the same command line, type them all after a single hyphen. For example, type who –uH and press Enter to see a list of users with idle times and column headings.
6. Type who –q and press Enter to see a quick list of current users. Do you see only login names and the total number of users on the system?                                                                                  
7. To determine which terminal you are using or what time you logged in, type who am i in the command line, and press Enter. What do you see? (Another option is to type whoami as one word, which only displays your account name or user ID, in case you are not certain which account you are currently using; this option is often used by system administrator. Also try entering who mom likes to see what you find out.)                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Type into a character array, or copy from an online source, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Write a C Language Program that will search for the following words and then print out the entire sentence from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address for every occurrence of each of the specified words:

            civil                  nation              nobly               people             place               proper

            Your program should search through the Gettysburg Address and find the answers, not pre-load them to print out once a particular word is sought.

This is my current code that I came up with:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main(void) {
   char address[] = "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate-we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.";
   char line[50], word1 = "civil", word2 = "nation", word3 = "nobly", word4 = "people", word5 = "place", word6 = "proper";
   int loc, i, j, k=0;

   puts("Searching for the sentences that contain the words: civil, nation, nobly, people, place, proper\n");

   loc = strstr(address, word1); //searching for 'civil' in the string
   if (loc == NULL)
       puts("No match found.");
   else
       printf("%s", line);

   loc = strstr(address, word2); //searching for 'nation' in the string
   if (loc == NULL)
       puts("No match found.");
   else
       printf("%s", line);

   loc = strstr(address, word3); //searching for 'nobly' in the string
   if (loc == NULL)
       puts("No match found.");
   else
       printf("%s", line);

   loc = strstr(address, word4); //searching for 'people' in the string
   if (loc == NULL)
       puts("No match found.");
   else
       printf("%s", line);

   loc = strstr(address, word5); //searching for 'place' in the string
   if (loc == NULL)
       puts("No match found.");
   else
       printf("%s", line);

   loc = strstr(address, word6); //searching for 'proper' in the string
   if (loc == NULL)
       puts("No match found.");
   else
       printf("%s", line);

   return 0;
}

What am I doing wrong here?

Target Corporation is the second-largest discount store retailer in the United States, behind Walmart, and a component of the S&P 500 Index. Founded by George Dayton and headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the company was originally named Good fellow Dry Goods in June 1902 before being renamed the Dayton's Dry Goods Company in 1903 and later the Dayton Company in 1910. The first Target store opened in Roseville, Minnesota in 1962 while the parent company was renamed the Dayton Corporation in 1967. It became the Dayton-Hudson Corporation after merging with the J.L. Hudson Company in 1969 and held ownership of several department store chains including Dayton's, Hudson's, Marshall Field's, and Mervyn's. Target established itself as the highest-earning division of the Dayton-Hudson Corporation in the 1970s; it began expanding the store nationwide in the 1980s and introduced new store formats under the Target brand in the 1990s. The company has found success as a cheap-chic player in the industry. The parent company was renamed the Target Corporation in 2000 and divested itself of its last department store chains in 2004. It suffered from a massive and highly publicized security breach of customer credit card data and the failure of its short-lived Canadian subsidiary in the early 2010s but experienced revitalized success with its expansion in urban markets within the United States. As of 2017, Target operates 1,834 stores throughout the United States. Their retail formats include the discount store Target, the hypermarket Super Target, and "flexible format" stores previously named City Target and Target Express before being consolidated under the Target branding. Target is often recognized for its emphasis on "the needs of its younger, image-conscious shoppers," whereas its rival Walmart more heavily relies on its strategy of "always low prices. Target Corporation decide to start its discount store in Saudi Arabia. The Target management hired you as Marketing Manager for its Saudi Arabia operation. You have to establish marketing department starting from the Analysis of market, formulate overall marketing goals, objectives, strategies and tactics within the context of an organization's business, mission, and goals designing and planning the entire function.

1. To establish the marketing function of Target Corporation, Saudi Arabia, you have to formulate the followings:

a. Vision b. Mission

c. Business objective.

d. Product and type of services.

2. Develop a marketing Plan for Target Corporation, Saudi Arabia. Define the SWOT analysis for Target Corporation, Saudi Arabia.

3. Analyze the Micro and Macro environment of the Target Corporation, Saudi Arabia.

4. How Target Corporation, Saudi Arabia will establish, develop, and enhance mutually beneficial relationships with customers? Discuss all the activities to establish, develop, and maintain customer sales? 5. Identify the various consumer decision processes for the Target Corporation customer?

6. How will you establish the market research for making better decision to establish and enhance the marketing?

7. How Target Corporation, KSA will evaluate market segments and choose the best ones to serve? How it will create value propositions to meet the requirements of target customers? 8. How Target Corporation, KSA will manage all of their products and services?

• The word count for this assignment must be between 2500 to 3000 words.

Please complete the following list of assignments and upload using this link. Please limit the number of files you create to a max of 2, one excel and one word document.

P 1-1 FASB Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts No. 2 indicates several qualitative characteristics of useful accounting information. Following is a list of some of these qualities, as well as a list of statements and phrases describing the qualities.

a. Benefits > costs

b. Decision usefulness

c. Relevance

d. Reliability

e. Predictive value, feedback value, timeliness

f. Verifiability, neutrality, representational faithfulness

g. Comparability

h. Materiality

i. Relevance, reliability

Required Place the appropriate letter identifying each quality on the line in front of the statement or phrase describing the quality.

__?_ 1.Without usefulness, there would be no benefits from information to set against

its cost.

__?_ 2. Pervasive constraint imposed on financial accounting information.

__?_ 3. Constraint that guides the threshold for recognition.

__?_ 4. A quality requiring that the information be timely and that it also have predictive value, feedback value, or both.

__?_ 5. A quality requiring that the information have representational faithfulness and that it be verifiable and neutral.

__?_ 6. These are the two primary qualities that make accounting information useful for decision making.

__?_ 7. These are the ingredients needed to ensure that the information is relevant.

__?_ 8. These are the ingredients needed to ensure that the information is reliable.

__?_ 9. Includes consistency and interacts with relevance and reliability to contribute to the usefulness of information.

Required Place the appropriate letter identifying each quality on the line in front of the statement or phrase describing the quality.

P1-2   

Certain underlying considerations have had an important impact on the development of generally accepted accounting principles. Following is a list of these underlying considerations, as well as a list of statements describing them.

a. Going concern or continuity

b. Monetary unit

c. Conservatism

d. Matching

i. Industry practices

j. Verifiability

k. Consistency

l. Realization

e. Full disclosure

f. Materiality

n. Time period

g. Transaction approach   

o. Business entity

h. Accrual basis

__?_ 1. The business for which the financial statements are prepared is separate and distinct from the owners.

__?_ 2. The assumption is made that the entity will remain in business for an indefinite period of time.

__?_ 3. Accountants need some standard of measure to bring financial transactions together in a meaningful way.

__?_ 4. Revenue should be recognized when the earning process is virtually complete and the exchange value can be objectively determined.

__?_ 5. This concept deals with when to recognize the costs that are associated with the recognized revenue.

__?_ 6. Accounting reports must disclose all facts that may influence the judgment of an informed reader.

__?_ 7. This concept involves the relative size and importance of an item to a firm.

__?_ 8. The accountant is required to adhere as closely as possible to verifiable data.

__?_ 9. Some companies use accounting reports that do not conform to the general theory that underlies accounting.

__?_ 10. The accountant records only events that affect the financial position of the entity and, at the same time, can be reasonably determined in monetary terms.

__?_ 11. Revenue must be recognized when it is realized (realization concept), and expenses are recognized when incurred (matching concept).

__?_ 12. The entity must give the same treatment to comparable transactions from period to period.

__?_ 13. The measurement with the least favorable effect on net income and financial

position in the current period must be selected.

Complete the following questions. In addition to answering the items below, you must submit an analysis of the assignment. Analyze the specific outcomes and write an analysis directed toward the team at Melanie Vail Corp. describing what the numbers mean and how they relate to the business. Submit journal entries in an Excel file and written segments in an MS Word document. For written answers, please make sure your responses are well-written, formatted per CSU-Global Guide to Writing and APA and have proper citations, if applicable. Melanie Vail Corp. sponsors a defined benefit pension plan for its employees. On January 1, 2017, the following balances relate to this plan. Plan assets $480,000 Projected benefit obligation 625,000 Accumulated OCI (PSC) 100,000 Dr. Accumulated OCI (Gain/Loss) 85,000 Cr. As a result of the operation of the plan during 2017, the following additional data are provided by the actuary: Service cost for 2017 $90,000 Settlement rate 9% Actual return on plan assets in 2017 57,000 Expected return on plan assets 10% Unexpected loss from change in projected benefit obligation, due to change in actuarial predictions 76,000 Contributions in 2017 99,000 Benefits paid retirees in 2017 85,000 Avg. remaining service life (all employees) 12 years Click the link below to download an Excel workbook containing the spreadsheets you will need for this exercise. Use the spreadsheet Pensions to prepare a pension worksheet. On the pension worksheet, compute pension expense, pension asset/liability, projected benefit obligation, plan assets, prior service cost, and net gain or loss. Prepare the journal entry using the spreadsheet Journal Entries to record pension expense in 2017. Indicate the reporting of the 2017 pension amounts in the income statement and balance sheet using the spreadsheet Pensions. What is the amount of deferred pension gain or loss that the company will carry forward to 2018? Compute the same items as in (#1), assuming that the expected rate of return is 14% and the Accumulated OCI (Gain/Loss) is a Debit balance at January 1, 2017.

Templet:

5). Finally, which of the following would you use to write out the results in an APA formatted results section? Note that this one is tricky – some answer options differ in only a single number or word! Pay close attention to details here.

A. We ran a One Way ANOVA with condition (FITD vs. DITF vs. Control) as our dependent variable and willingness to participate in the 30 minute study as our independent variable. The One Way ANOVA was significant, F(2, 87) = 4.05, p < .05. Tukey post hoc tests showed that participants were significantly less willing to participate in the 30 minute study in the control condition (M = 6.63, SD = 1.30) than in both the FITD condition (M = 7.40, SD = 1.00) and the DITF condition (M = 7.37, SD = 1.22), though the DITF and FITD conditions did not differ from each other.

B. We ran a One Way ANOVA with condition (FITD vs. DITF vs. Control) as our independent variable and willingness to participate in the 30 minute study as our dependent variable. The One Way ANOVA was significant, F(2, 87) = 4.05, p < .05. Tukey post hoc tests showed that participants were significantly less willing to participate in the 30 minute study in the control condition (M = 6.63, SD = 1.30) than in both the FITD condition (M = 7.40, SD = 1.00) and the DITF condition (M = 7.37, SD = 1.22), though the DITF and FITD conditions did not differ from each other.

C. We ran a One Way ANOVA with condition (FITD vs. DITF vs. Control) as our independent variable and willingness to participate in the 30 minute study as our dependent variable. The One Way ANOVA was significant, F(2, 87) = 4.05, p < .001. Tukey post hoc tests showed that participants were significantly less willing to participate in the 30 minute study in the control condition (M = 6.63, SD = 1.30) than in both the FITD condition (M = 7.40, SD = 1.00) and the DITF condition (M = 7.37, SD = 1.22), though the DITF and FITD conditions did not differ from each other.

D. We ran a One Way ANOVA with condition (FITD vs. DITF vs. Control) as our independent variable and willingness to participate in the 30 minute study as our dependent variable. The One Way ANOVA was not significant, F(2, 89) = 4.05, p > .05. Since p was greater than .05, there was no need to conduct post hoc tests.

E. We ran a One Way ANOVA with condition (FITD vs. DITF vs. Control) as our independent variable and willingness to participate in the 30 minute study as our dependent variable. The One Way ANOVA was significant, F(2, 87) = 4.05, p < .05. Tukey post hoc tests showed that participants were significantly less willing to do the study in the control condition (M = 6.63, SD = 1.30) than in both the FITD condition (M = 7.40, SD = 1.00) and the DITF condition (M = 7.37, SD = 1.22). In addition, those in the DITF condition were significantly less willing to participate in the 30 minute study than those in the FITD condition.

Portfolio Project:

Exotic Food Inc., Capital Budgeting Case

CASE SUMMARY

Exotic Food Inc., a food processing company located in Herndon, VA, is considering adding a new division to produce fresh ginger juice. Following the ongoing TV buzz about significant health benefits derived from ginger consumption, the managers believe this drink will be a hit. However, the CEO questions the profitability of the venture given the high costs involved. To address his concerns, you have been asked to evaluate the project using three capital budgeting techniques (i.e., NPV, IRR and Payback) and present your findings in a report.

CASE OVERVIEW

The main equipment required is a commercial food processor which costs $200,000. The shipping and installation cost of the processor from China is $50,000. The processor will be depreciated under the MACRS system using the applicable depreciation rates are 33%, 45%, 15%, and 7% respectively. Production is estimated to last for three years, and the company will exit the market before intense competition sets in and erodes profits. The market value of the processor is expected to be $100,000 after three years. Net working capital of $2,000 is required at the start, which will be recovered at the end of the project. The juice will be packaged in 20 oz. containers that sell for $3.00 each. The company expects to sell 150,000 units per year; cost of goods sold is expected to total 70% of dollar sales.

               Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC):

Exotic Food’s common stock is currently listed at $75 per share; new preferred stock sells for $80 per share and pays a dividend of $5.00. Last year, the company paid dividends of $2.00 per share for common stock, which is expected to grow at a constant rate of 10%. The local bank is willing to finance the project at 10.5% annual interest. The company’s marginal tax rate is 35%, and the optimum target capital structure is:

Your main task is to compute and evaluate the cash flows using capital budgeting techniques, analyze the results, and present your recommendations whether the company should take on the project.

QUESTIONS

To help in the analysis, answer all the following questions. Present the analysis in one Excel file with the data, computations, formulas, and solutions. It is preferred that the Excel file be embedded inside the WORD document (question 8).

1. What is the total investment amount at the start of the project (i.e., year zero cash flow)?
2. What is the depreciation amount for each year?
   • Create a depreciation schedule
3. What is the after-tax salvage value of the equipment?
4. What is the projected net income and Operating Cash Flows (OCF) for the three years?
   • Complete an income statement for each year.
5. What are the Free Cash Flows (FCF) generated from the project?
   • Create a projected cash flow schedule
6. What is the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC)?
   • Compute the after-tax cost of debt
   • Compute the cost of common equity
   • Compute the cost of preferred stock
   • Compute the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC)
7. Using a WACC of 15%, apply four capital budgeting techniques to evaluate the project, assuming the Free Cash Flows are as follows:

The four techniques are NPV, IRR, MIRR, and discounted Payback. Assume the reinvestment rate to be 8% for the MIRR. Also, assume that the business will only accept projects with a payback period of two and half years or less.