Carol is a vice president for sales and marketing at her company. She conducts a survey asking customers their impressions of the product offering, the quality of the product and their level of customer satisfaction. Carol can use the survey results to:

a. determine the most effective hiring strategy for recruiting future employees.
b. improve employee efficiency by identifying bottlenecks in the manufacturing process that slow down production and add cost.
c. identify the building blocks of competitive advantage and develop strategies to use them to increase profitability.
d. set pricing strategy for the company's upcoming product line offering.

Advanced factors of production are more likely to be rare and are harder to imitate. Strategically, managers who have identified these advanced factors should:

a. let these resources manage themselves as they are already working and don't require interference from a manager.
b. take steps to protect these assets, either formally or as a trade secret, optimize the company's use of them and not outsource them to other firms.
c. abandon them and start over to seek out different resources to develop, manage and utilize to make the company more profitable.
d. share them with competitors to improve the overall profitability of the industry.

The four building blocks of a competitive advantage have an interdependent relationship. Which of these describes a strategy that adds value to multiple factors as it goes through several activities in the value chain?

a. A grocery store recognizes that its checkout lines are longest between 4 and 7 p. m. on weeknights. The company decides to add cashiers during these peak hours even though it results in a lower rate of sales per employee-hour.
b. A sporting goods store recognizes the increased customer demand for running shoes in the early spring and implements a 5% price increase at the beginning of the season each year.
c. A coffee shop replaces its espresso machines with a newer model that utilizes less energy but creates the same quality of coffee drink.
d. In response to requests from customers for healthier food on the menu, a restaurant tweaks its recipe for its most popular sandwich to remove processed ingredients and replace them with fresh vegetables.

1) Carol can use the surve results to . identify the building blocks of competitive advantage and develop strategies to use them to increase profitability and in this way try to get the most out of it.

2) Strategically, managers who have identified these advanced factors should take steps to protect these assets, either formally or as a trade secret, optimize the company's use of them and not outsource them to other firms because it is convenient to try that the competition does not find out about the use of this factor of production so that it cannot imitate them and thus be able to gain a greater market share to the competition.

3) The statement "in response to requests from customers for healthier food on the menu, a restaurant tweaks its recipe for its most popular sandwich to remove processed ingredients and replace them with fresh vegetables." describes a strategy that adds value to multiple factors as it goes through several activities in the value chain because the company's decision to use less processed ingredients and more fresh vegetables not only facilitates production but also responds to a customer need, which will value the products even more.

sound is invisible, but sometimes we can feel it. when a kettle-drum is thumped with a stick that time the tight drum skin moving up and down very quickly for some time and then it pumped sound waves into the air. loudspeakers also work in a similar manner.

components of a speaker:

electromagnet

in order to translate an electrical signal into an audible sound, an electromagnet is used in looudspeakers

  suspension

suspension is used to   center the voice coil in the gap of the magnet and it exerts a restoring force to keep it there. suspension is used to limits the maximum mechanical excursion of the diaphragm and voice coil.

voice coil

voice coil is a coil of wire which is attached to the apex of a loudspeaker cone. it provides the motive force to the cone by the reaction of a magnetic field to the current passing through it.

cone

in a   loudspeaker, a   thin, semi-rigid membrane attached to the voice coil, which moves in a magnetic gap due to which it vibrates   and produced sound. it is known as diaphragm and it can also be called a cone, though not all speaker diaphragms are cone-shaped.

surround

surround is also known as front suspension. surround is used to join the cone to the chassis. together with the suspension it controls the cone excursion, and it is also used to   determine how energy which is   travelling through the cone is absorbed, and how the speaker limits when it reaches the ends of its travel.

dustcap

dustcap is used to protect the voice coil from dust and dirt. it is a part of the cone.

how speaker work

the outer part of the cone is fastened to the outer part of the loudspeaker's circular metal rim. the inner part is fixed to   voice coil that sits just in front of a permanent magnet . when loudspeaker is hooked up to a stereo, electrical signals feed through the speaker cables into the coil. it will convert the coil into an electromagnet magnet . when electricity flows back and forth in the cables, the electromagnet either repels or attract the permanent magnet. this moves the coil back and forth, and it pull and push the loudspeaker cone. like a drum skin vibrating back and forth, the moving cone pumps sounds out into the air.in this way loudspeakers works.

was my answer wrong?