Island publishing company publishes two types of magazines on a monthly basis: a restaurant and entertainment guide and a real estate guide. the company distributes the magazines free to businesses, hotels, and stores on hilton head island in south carolina. the company’s profits come exclusively from the paid advertising in the magazines. each of the restaurant and entertainment guides distributed generates $0.50 per magazine in advertising revenue, whereas the real estate guide generates $0.75 per magazine. the real estate magazine is a more sophisticated publication that includes color photos, and accordingly it costs $0.25 per magazine to print, compared with only $0.17 for the restaurant and entertainment guide. the publishing company has a printing budget of $4,000 per month. there is enough rack space to distribute at most 18,000 magazines each month. in order to entice businesses to place advertisements, island publishing promises to distribute at least 8,000 copies of each magazine. the company wants to determine the number of copies of each magazine it should print each month in order to maximize advertising revenue.

David burdick is the ceo of acme bubblegum, a successful public company. as one of the cofounders of the company, burdick has enjoyed speaking and writing about the success of acme bubblegum for several years. typically, he speaks at conferences or directly to the press, but recently, he has been blogging about his firm anonymously. specifically, he defended a recent advertising campaign that was unpopular among consumers and pointedly attacked one of acme bubblegum’s competitors. burdick deeply enjoys his anonymous blogging and believes that none of his readers actually know that he works for acme bubblegum.should burdick be allowed to praise his company’s performance anonymously online? should he be allowed to attack his competitors without disclosing his relationship with the company? how would you feel if the ceo of a company at which you shopped was secretly writing criticisms of his or her competition? how would you feel if you knew a writer for your favorite blog was actually closely involved in a company that the blog discussed? 1. define the ethical issue? 2. who are the primary stakeholders? 3. what are the possible alternatives? 4. how could you evaluate the ethical implications of the alternative actions (use appropriate decision rules)? 5. what action would you recommend and why?