Shelly works as a call-center employee from inside her home. The company she works for does not mind that she works from home because she is so good at her job. Her professionalism hardly varies from one call to the next. One day, however, she learned that her mother had died. Rather than taking off work, she went through the work day as routine. A few days later, a customer complained to the firm that she did not like Shelly's attitude when she contacted her with questions about a product. She felt that Shelly was brusque and rude. The company investigated the matter and found that Shelly had lost her patience with the customer over the phone. However, when they found out about her situation, they only gave her a verbal warning.

Which characteristic of services caused a problem for the firm in this scenario?

a. Intanglbilty
b. heterogeneity
c. inseparability
d. low customer contact
e. perishability

Mr. smith recently faced a choice between being (a) an economics profes-sor, which pays $60,000/yr, or (b) a safari leader, which pays $50,000/yr. after careful deliberation, smith took the safari job, but it was a close call. "for a dollar more," he said, "i'd have gone the other way."now smith's brother-in-law approaches him with a business proposition. the terms are as follows: - smith must resign his safari job to work full-time in his brother-in-law's business.- smith must give his brother-in-law an interest-free loan of $100,000, which will be repaid in full if and when smith leaves the business. (smith currently has much more than $100,000 in the the business will pay smith a salary of $70,000/yr. he will receive no other payment from the business.the interest rate is 10 percent per year. apart from salary considerations, smith feels that working in the business would be just as enjoyable as being an economics professor. for simplicity, assume there is no uncertainty regarding either smith's salary in the proposed business or the security of his monetary investment in it. should smith join his brother-in-law and, if so, how small would smith's salary from the business have to be to make it not worthwhile for him to join? if not, how large would smith's salary from the business have to be to make it worthwhile for him to join?

Bond x is noncallable and has 20 years to maturity, a 7% annual coupon, and a $1,000 par value. your required return on bond x is 10%; if you buy it, you plan to hold it for 5 years. you (and the market) have expectations that in 5 years, the yield to maturity on a 15-year bond with similar risk will be 9.5%. how much should you be willing to pay for bond x today? (hint: you will need to know how much the bond will be worth at the end of 5 years.) do not round intermediate calculations. round your answer to the nearest cent.

Effective capacity is the: a. capacity a firm expects to achieve given the current operating constraints.b. minimum usable capacity of a particular facility.c. sum of all the organization's inputs.d. average output that can be achieved under ideal conditions.e. maximum output of a system in a given period.