Case Assignment

The Case assignment is performed using information on a company of your choice that is publicly traded in the stock market. If you are unsure which company to choose, you can look through the list of companies in the S&P 500 at the Yahoo Finance Portal (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cp?s=%5EGSPC) or choose from a list of companies provided in the Appendix. Search the company’s website and obtain information about the company’s products, their markets, their recent price, revenue and profit history, and the main characteristics of the industry the company operates.

Using this information, write a 4 to 5 page paper commenting on two of the following four questions:

• Government regulators are concerned with market power. Does your company have market power?  Or does your company operate in a competitive market? If so, provide a few examples.
• Does your company operate using only a price strategy, or does it employ other strategies, such as advertising and product differentiation? If so, explain why and provide a few examples.
• Do prices and other incentives play a significant role in your company? If so, explain why and provide a few examples. For example, how is the CEO of your company compensated? Salary only? Salary and bonuses? Salary and stock options? What is the reason for these alternative arrangements?
• Your company wants to increase its total revenue. One strategy is to offer a 10% discount. Your company, however, knows that its customers can be divided into two distinct groups according to their likely responses to the discount. The accompanying table shows how the two groups respond to the discount.