Starling Inc. is a public stock company that provides natural gas for businesses. Although this company generates a large profit, management's focus on reducing costs caused the maintenance budget to be trimmed. Its pipelines have at times leaked, which created significant environmental problems. As a result, the company's value creation has suffered. This scenario supports Michael Porter's warning that public companies
A) often do not keep economic needs and societal needs separate from each other, thereby contributing to low value creation.
B) have defined value creation too narrowly in terms of financial performance, thereby contributing to black swan events.
C) do not focus enough on increasing firm profits, thereby contributing to low value creation.
D) have defined value creation too narrowly and as a result have ignored political lobbying, thereby contributing to black swan events

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?

Which of the following would not generally be a motive for a firm to hold inventories? a. to decouple or separate parts of the production process b. to provide a stock of goods that will provide a selection for customers c. to take advantage of quantity discounts d. to minimize holding costs e. all of the above are functions of inventory.

Owns a machine that can produce two specialized products. production time for product tlx is two units per hour and for product mtv is four units per hour. the machine’s capacity is 2,100 hours per year. both products are sold to a single customer who has agreed to buy all of the company’s output up to a maximum of 3,570 units of product tlx and 1,610 units of product mtv. selling prices and variable costs per unit to produce the products follow. product tlx product mtv selling price per unit $ 11.50 $ 6.90 variable costs per unit 3.45 4.14 determine the company's most profitable sales mix and the contribution margin that results from that sales mix.