Sales of a product under relatively stable market conditions tend to decline at a constant annual rate in the absence of promotional activities. This sales decline can be expressed by the exponential function s = s, e-a, where s is the sales at time t, t is time in years, so is the sales at time t = 0, and a is the sales decay constant. Suppose sales of On-Time watches were 45,000 the first year and 37,000 the second year,
a) Find the value for a in the equation for this sales decline. (nearest thousandth)
b) Find the projected sales for the third year.
c) If the trend continues, when would you expect sales to be 15,000 units? (nearest tenth)