Cisco purchased Pure Digital, maker of the Flip video recorder, but ended up shutting the unit down a little over two years later. The reason for Cisco's failure was:
a. Envelopment. Smartphone manufacturers and music players began to offer video recording features, enveloping the benefit provided by Pure's gear in their offerings.
b. Network effects. Late-arriving Cisco could not compete against the dominance of existing, incompatible standards created by early-moving incumbents.
c. The Osbour Effect. Cisco preannounced a product and no one wanted its current offerings.
d. Staying power. Consumers weren't convinced a small firm like Cisco could win in the market.

Onsider the following subscription behavior information from genie, a web site that provides tools for constructing a family tree (ancestor search). subscriptions cost $9.99 per month, but you are charged for the entire year at the time of purchase. there is a one-year minimum term when you sign up for the service. once purchased, subscriptions are set to renew automatically unless the subscriber cancels them. when a membership renews, it renews for a one-year term and again you are charged for the entire year. there are no variable costs associated with providing this service to an individual customer, but genie does engage in customer relationship activities that they believe will increase customer retention. these customer relationship activities cost genie about $10 per year per customer. based on a sample of 1000 customers that joined genie five years ago, near the time when the company was founded, they were able to determine how many of those customers remained subscribers in the second year, third year etc. based on this information, genie calculated the average annual retention rate to be 20%. genie uses an annual discount rate of 8%. a. last year, genie spent $10,000 placing advertisements on google. genie management believes that these advertisements were responsible for about 300 new subscribers. would you recommend to genie management that they purchase more google ads? b. suppose a newly-introduced loyalty program increases the number of customers that remained to 30%. does this new data change your answer to 9.a? c. do you have any hesitations or concerns about making recommendations to management based on your above estimate of customer lifetime value?

Salt corporation's contribution margin ratio is 78% and its fixed monthly expenses are $30,000. assume that the company's sales for may are expected to be $89,000. required: estimate the company's net operating income for may, assuming that the fixed monthly expenses do not change.

Ashop owner uses a reorder point approach to restocking a certain raw material. lead time is six days. usage of the material during lead time is normally distributed with a mean of 42 pounds and a standard deviation of four pounds. when should the raw material be reordered if the acceptable risk of a stockout is 3 percent?