The company uses a custom-made software program to manage its inventory. The company paid a consulting firm $32,000 to develop the custom software. The annual opportunity cost for the resource is $.

1. the political environment in india has proven to be critical to company performance for both pepsico and coca-cola india. what specific aspects of the political environment have played key roles? could these effects have been anticipated prior to market entry? if not, could developments in the political arena have been handled better by each company? 2. timing of entry into the indian market brought different results for pepsico and coca-cola india. what benefits or disadvantages accrued as a result of earlier or later market entry? 3. the indian market is enormous in terms of population and geography. how have the two companies responded to the sheer scale of operations in india in terms of product policies, promotional activities, pricing policies, and distribution arrangements? 4. “global localization” (glocalization) is a policy that both companies have implemented successfully. give examples for each company from the case.

Afirm wants to strengthen its financial position. which of the following actions would increase its current ratio? a. reduce the company's days' sales outstanding to the industry average and use the resulting cash savings to purchase plant and equipment.b. use cash to repurchase some of the company's own stock.c. borrow using short-term debt and use the proceeds to repay debt that has a maturity of more than one year.d. issue new stock, then use some of the proceeds to purchase additional inventory and hold the remainder as cash.e. use cash to increase inventory holdings.

Blue computers, a major pc manufacturer in the united states, currently has plants in kentucky and pennsylvania. the kentucky plant has a capacity of 1 million units a year and the pennsylvania plant has a capacity of 1.5 million units a year. the firm divides the united states into five markets: northeast, southeast, midwest, south, and west. each pc sells for $1,000. the firm anticipates a 50 perc~nt growth in demand (in each region) this year (after which demand will stabilize) and wants to build a plant with a capacity of 1.5 million units per year to accommodate the growth. potential sites being considered are in north carolina and california. currently the firm pays federal, state, and local taxes on the income from each plant. federal taxes are 20 percent of income, and all state and local taxes are 7 percent of income in each state. north carolina has offered to reduce taxes for the next 10 years from 7 percent to 2 percent. blue computers would like to take the tax break into consideration when planning its network. consider income over the next 10 years in your analysis. assume that all costs remain unchanged over the 10 years. use a discount factor of 0.1 for your analysis. annual fixed costs, production and shipping costs per unit, and current regional demand (before the 50 percent growth) are shown in table 5-13. (a) if blue computers sets an objective of minimizing total fixed and variable costs, where should they build the new plant? how should the network be structured? (b) if blue computers sets an objective of maximizing after-tax profits, where should they build the new plant? how should the network be structured? variable production and shipping cost ($/unit) annual fixed cost northeast southeast midwest south west (million$) kentucky 185 180 175 175 200 150 pennsylvania 170 190 180 200 220 200 n. carolina 180 180 185 185 215 150 california 220 220 195 195 175 150 demand ('000 units/month) 700 400 400 300 600