...Metabical: Pricing, Packaging, and Demand Forecasting for a New Weight-Loss Drug 1- Discuss Metabical’s points of differentiation compared to current weight-loss options? After 10 years of testing and spending a significant amount in research and development. Cambridge Sciences Pharmaceuticals (CSP) discovered one of the best weight- loss drug that called Metabical. Metabical has unique characteristics that make it different in market. People are always concerned about the side effect of any drug and sometime they preclude taking drug just because they are doubtful. Metabicals is differentiated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval. It is the first and only prescription drug that received FDA approval to meet the needs of consumer. Negative side effects disgrace many previous prescription weight loss drugs and most people become more cautious of using any weight loss drugs. While, metabicals has very minor side effects, it becomes the optimum option to who are concerned about the negative consequences. Metabicals gained consumers’ confidence who are looking to effective method to reach a desirable weight and improve their overall health. Metabical effectiveness is one of the keys that drive the product to success. The study shows people who are taking Metabical loss an average of 26 pounds, while other who is using a placebo loss an average of 6 pounds. One of the differences is Metabical maintained weight loss levels within 10% of the clinical trials...
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...JØRGENSEN Author: QIAN Zhang (402847) Pricing of principle protected notes embedded with Asian options in Denmark ---- Using a Monte Carlo Method with stochastic volatility (the Heston Model) Aarhus School of Business and Social Science 2011 2 Acknowledgements My gratitude and appreciation goes to my supervisor Peter Lø chte Jø rgensen, for his kind and insightful discussion and guide through my process of writing. I was always impressed by his wisdom, openness and patience whenever I wrote an email or came by to his office with some confusion and difficulty. Especially on access to the information on certain Danish structured products, I have gained great help and support from him. 3 Abstract My interest came after the reading of the thesis proposal on strucured products written by Henrik, as is pointed out and suggested at the last part of this proposal, one of the main limitations of this thesis may be the choice of model. This intrigues my curiosity on pricing Asian options under assumption of stochstic volatility. At first, after the general introduction of strucutred products, the Black Scholes Model and risk neutral pricing has been explained. The following comes the disadvanges of BS model and then moves to the stochastic volatility model, among which the Heston model is highlighted and elaborated. The next part of this thesis is an emricical studying of two structured products embbeded with Asian options in Danish market and follows with a conclusion...
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...Case Analysis “Virgin Mobile USA: Pricing for the Very First Time” Marketing II – BUSI2202U Group 40, Tuesday Session Word Count: Paper 2,912, Appendix 345 Problem Definition The unimpressive performance numbers in the market belonging to Virgin Mobile are mainly due to the lack of an attractive pricing strategy that would appeal to the target market group. The target market group (consumers aged 19 to 25) have different characteristics than other market groups and Virgin Mobile’s current pricing strategy is clearly not complementing those characteristics. As a result, a re-evaluation of the target market group is required in order to choose a better and more correct pricing strategy to appeal to the majority. The re-evaluation should result in a more successful pricing strategy as well as a solid entrance strategy to get the largest amount of exposure. Situation Analysis External Variables The American cellular market was not an easy market to penetrate as it was already overcrowded. Adding another service provider would not be an easy feat for Virgin Mobile. By 2001, there were already six national carriers and many regional players as well. Based on market share there were only four main industry players; Verizon, Cingular, AT&T, and Sprint. These companies controlled over 60% of the market along with VoiceStream, Alltel, US Cellular, Leap and number of smaller carriers. On top of there being many competitors, it was also believed that the cellular market...
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...Atlantic Computer needs to make an important decision on the pricing strategy of its new product, the Atlantic Bundle. It is the development of a basic server model called The Tronn. Until now, Atlantic has been recognized, with a 20% of the market share, for the development and distribution of high performance servers. It is estimated that this market segment will keep growing around 3% annually in the next two years. However, with the growth of the Internet, it has become convenient for many companies to acquire a low-end system, and Atlantic wants to penetrate this market segment by the launching of The Tronn. In addition, it is estimated that the market segment for low-end servers will increasingly grow much faster (about 36% annually) than the market segment for high performance servers in the next two years. Nonetheless, since the two described types of servers are totally different and have different functions, they will have different market shares and I believe that there will be no cannibalization. In order to make a wise decision, it is important for the company to identify not only who the new customers will be but also what their needs are. Companies need a basic computer server that allows them to perform simple, repeatable tasks. To satisfy these needs, Atlantic is considering adding to the Trunn a software tool called PESA (Performance Enhancing Server Accelerator), which would allow the Trunn to perform up to four times faster than a standard basic server. According...
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...Managing Customers Categories in the Restaurant Market When one talks about managing customers they should consider the categories of the market. There are three categories within the market captive, mass and status market. But what are these. Let me begin by talking about Captive Market, according to the (Business dictionary.com, 2013) it is those Customers who are constrained to purchase from a particular supplier or seller or according to (The Law Dictionary, 2013) it refers to markets where potential consumers face severely limited amount of competitive suppliers; therefore their only choice is to purchase what is available or to make no purchase at all. Both definitions are basically stating the same thing as customers are have limited options when purchasing or selecting meals, they are basically constrained with the places they eat, when they eat, where they eat and the prices they are being charged. Within a captive market there is no competition for business as there might be limited suppliers offering the products or if offered it may be so expensive that the customer cannot afford it. Also there could be limited or no alternatives for consumers. A captive market can manage to exist in the following situations shortages, customer are unable to obtained products in sufficient amounts that they require, high prices of competing restaurants making it impossible for customer to dine or even think about dining. It could also be that there is lack of competition meaning...
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...extremely difficult to gauge just how much investors expect on an annual return from us. Given all the circumstances that go in to making an investment decision for individuals I am going to use the Capital Asset Pricing Method to calculate what type of return we need to generate in order to make our shareholders feel like they made a wise investment. When trying to accurately value the stock of a company and expected returns there are three common methods of doing so. One method is the dividend growth model. This model tries to “value a company based on the theory that a stock is worth the discounted sum of all of its future dividend payments.” For some investors this could be a reasonable way to try to calculate what type of returns they could expect. With Under Armour, this would not help at all. Currently we do not pay any dividend. We use all the capital and cash we have in order to grow our business. There are numerous companies that entice investors because they pay a quarterly dividend from the revenue they generate. Because we are still a very young company we are not at a comfortable point to pay dividends yet. As we grow and our sales become more consistent we may offer a dividend at some point in the future. One issue for investors using this method is that it assumes that dividends will be stable. While there are many mature companies that have never missed a dividend payment...
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...EXCEL MODELING AND ESTIMATION IN CORPORATE FINANCE Third Edition CRAIG W. HOLDEN Max Barney Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor Kelley School of Business Indiana University Copyright © 2008 by Prentice Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 To Kathryn, Diana, and Jimmy. Contents iii CONTENTS Preface ..................................................................................... vii Third Edition Changes .................................................................................... vii What Is Unique About This Book ..................................................................... x Conventions Used In This Book .......................................................................xi Craig’s Challenge ........................................................................................... xiii The Excel Modeling and Estimation Series .................................................. xiii Suggestions for Faculty Members ..................................................................xiv Acknowledgements ........................................................................................... xv About The Author ................................................................. xvi PART 1 TIME VALUE OF MONEY ..... 1 Chapter 1 Single Cash Flow ....................................................1 1.1 Present Value .......................................................................................
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...by 1.91%, as shown in the horizontal analysis line 10. The company has continued to grow its net sales for the past three years. Custom Snowboards Inc has the ability to continue increasing net sales. Gross profits have remained constant at 30.4%, as shown on the vertical analysis line 12, between years 12, 13, and 14. This demonstrates that the company has kept the margin consistent each year with the cost of goods sold which can be seen in the horizontal analysis lines 11 and 12. These two lines show that between years 12 and 13, the cost of goods sold increased at 3.21%, the same rate that the gross profit increased. And again between yeas 13 and 14, the gross profit increased the same as the cost of goods sold at 1.9%. Custom Snowboards Inc has not allowed the cost of overhead to rise faster than the sales increase. The net earnings of Custom Snowboards Inc have decreased over the last three years. Line 41 of the horizontal analysis shows a 14.42% decrease between years 12 and 13, and a 27.79% decrease between years 13 and 14. The decreases in net earnings have been mainly due to the increases in administrative salaries and executive compensations. As the company has grown, so has the need compensate administrative staff and executives to ensure knowledgeable staff that can continue to grow net sales. Sales are projected to rise over the next three years. The sales trend analysis demonstrates this growth between years 15 and 14 with a 3% growth and again between...
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...Second Order Moment Approach to Real Options Analysis Submitted as a Component of Required Courses for the Award of Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) Honours School of Civil Engineering University of New South Wales Author: Ariel Hersh October 2010 Supervisor: Professor David G. Carmichael i ORIGINALITY STATEMENT ‘I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.’ Signed …………………………………………….............. Date …………………………………………….............. ii 1. ABSTRACT Real options analysis can be used by investors to determine the value of potential investments that offer an owner the right but not the obligation to exercise a strategic decision at a predetermined time and price. Tools which are popular for valuing financial ...
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...commonly employed in applied economics; to provide participants with sufficient knowledge of regression methods to critically evaluate and interpret empirical research. On completion of this module students should be able to: demonstrate understanding of the assumptions and properties underlying regression analysis and the principle of ‘least squares’; interpret and manipulate the coefficients of multiple regression and performance criteria; conduct diagnostic checking of the validity of regression equations coefficients; appreciate the problems of misspecification, multicollinearity, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation. Content: 1. Simple Regression Analysis 2. Multiple Regression Analysis 3. Dummy Variables 4. Heteroscedasticity 5. Autocorrelation Main Textbook: Dougherty, C. (2011). Introduction to Econometrics, 4th edition, Oxford. 2. Module Name: Computational Finance Code: P12614 Credits: 10 Semester: Spring 2011/12 Programme classes: 12 1-2 hour lectures/workshops Aims: The module aims to describe and analyse the general finance topics and introduces students to implement basic computational approaches to financial problems using Microsoft Excel. It stresses the fundamentals of finance; provides students with a knowledge and understanding on the key finance subjects such as money market, return metric, portfolio modelling, asset pricing, etc.; and equips students with the essential techniques applied in financial calculations. Contents: ...
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...AUGUSTINE MEDICAL, INC. CASE ANALYSIS THE BAIR HUGGER PATIENT WARMING SYSTEM I. Factual Summary: * The United States does not currently have an established warm-air technology blanket market. * The Bair Hugger Patient Warming System product is not a consumer device. The main users of this product consist of businesses and hospitals. * Hospitals will always be provided funding necessary to prevent hypothermia and other diseases; as a result a demand will consistently be common. * Augustine Medical, Inc. is using a push strategy. They are relying on distributors to push their products on to their prospective buyers. * Approximately there are 5,500 hospitals that have operating rooms and postoperative recovery rooms. * The target market for the product is hospitals with seven or more recovery room beds. The target market makes up 80% of all surgical operations in the United States (26,155 recovery beds). * It was stated that there are 21,000,000 surgical operations per year in the United States which 60 to 80 percent of these become hypothermic. Thus, on an average, 14,700,000 patients (21,000,000*70%) suffer from postoperative hypothermia. * The firm projected that one system would be sold for every eight postoperative recovery room beds. According to the firm’s research, the market could allow around of 3,269 heater/blower units to be sold (26,155 recovery beds/8). * By subcontracting the heater/blower unit, the company drastically...
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...Westmount is a 125-unit Retirement Residence established in 1997 that offers both assisted living and independent supportive living options to seniors in the community. After a history of high occupancy rates, stable clientele and profitable operations the establishment is now going through a period of low profitability. After analyzing the costing system of the company and designing a new pricing model with the purpose of remaining as profitable as in the past while continuing to attract new clients; the main findings were: Strengths and limitations of the current costing model o Simplicity – Very easy to calculate and distribute cost between residents and apartments (strength) o Out of date – It did not consider the evolution in the patient´s demands through time – In the past, all the patients required similar services, but nowadays clients have different demands (limitation) o It does not take into account the cost drivers (which are the most relevant activities that generate costs). (limitation) o It does not allow establishing a pricing system that takes into account the required patient care or a just price according to the three suite options and number of occupants per suite. (limitation) 2005 Poor results were due to: o The retirement center does not have differentiated pricing system for patients with medium and intense medical needs. o Cost of medium and intense medical needs patients represented 88% of the total cost in supportive services o There is no extra charge...
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...Eco- Shack is higher than its competitors and lastly, Doug and Paul did not highlight the unique features of their product. After analysing, we had identified that for the consumer market, the green consumers segment will be interested in Eco- Shack. The four primary bases in this segment are geography, demographics, psychographics and behavioural (QuickMBA 2010). Meanwhile, for the business market, two segments that could be interested in Eco- Shack are businesses that are looking for an office site and those who are concern of the environment. There are many segmentation bases in business market which includes company size, industry, operating practices, culture and geographic. This report will further analyse on cost based pricing, a type of pricing strategy currently used by Eco- Shack developer. This strategy is commonly used by smaller firms because it is easy to be implemented and allows firms to estimate their profit margin more accurately. However, this strategy does not respond to market change, thus we can say that the price of Eco- Shack is less competitive compared to competitors’ price. To solve the problems stated above, this report had suggested some marketing strategies that can be applied by Doug and Paul. Firstly, they can use micromarketing –a technique that involves tailoring and customising services to individual needs (Verdino 2010). We also recommend that they should...
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...International Business & Economics Research Journal Volume 3, Number 3 Effects of Exchange Rates On International Transfer Pricing Decisions Canri Chan (E-mail: canri.chan@miis.edu), Monterey Institute of International Studies Steven P. Landry (E-mail: steve.landry@miis.edu), Monterey Institute of International Studies Terrance Jalbert (E-mail: jalbert@hawaii.edu), University of Hawaii at Hilo Abstract Events leading to the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act have led to increased concern with and scrutiny of potential management manipulation of financial statements. From an agency theory perspective, managers have incentives to manipulate organizational methods and choices in order to produce financial statements that those managers believe will maximize their incentive compensation. Transfer pricing represents one possible choice that managers can manipulate. This paper investigates whether exchange rates affect transfer pricing particularly as it relates to maximizing overall corporate profitability. The effects of taxes and government regulations have been explored in considerable depth in the transfer pricing literature. However, while transfer prices should also be affected by exchange rates in predictable ways, this variable has received comparably little attention in the literature. Inclusion of exchange rates in an analysis of transfer pricing and corporate profitability presents an opportunity to add to the literature. We conducted an experiment to examine how managers...
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...growth in net sales of 3.7% in Year 17 from Year 14. These higher sales will have a direct impact in driving profitability. * Operating Income – The Company did a good job in containing its selling expenses keeping them proportional to the net sales; however, they did not do a good job in managing the General and Admin Expenses from Year 13 to Year 14. Specifically with the line items of administrative salaries, executive compensation and other general & admin expenses. With both net sales and gross profit declining by 3.40% in Year 14 from Year 13, administrative salaries increased by 13.64 %, executive compensation increased by 10.26% and other general & admin expenses increased by 7.59%. In turn, the significant increases of these three line items were the...
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