Dakota Office Products

Imagine that you have decided to open a small ice cream stand on campus called "Ice-Campusades." You are very excited because you love ice cream (delicious!) and this is a fun way for you to apply your business and economics skills! Here is the first month's scenario--you order the same number (and the same variety) of ice creams each day from the ice cream suppliers, and your ice creams are always marked at $1.50 each. However, you notice that there are days when ice creams remain unsold but other days when there are not enough ice creams for the number of customers.

The rise in revenue was rapid starting from the year of operations. The key period of business was from April to September were revenues were equal to 65% of total revenue as the product was seasonal. The basis of forecasting for the year 1981 & 1982 is the expectations of sales by Mr. Turner & Mr. Rose. It is given that total sales were $ 15.80 million in first half of year 1981 and the total sales in 1981 to reach $ 30 million. Profit after tax was expected to be $ 1 million for 1st half and we assumed for the next half, profit will be in proportion to first half & expected to be amounting to $ 0.90 million. For year 1982, the sales expectation by Mr. Rose was around more than $ 71 million &

Second, the manufacturing order costs for non-stocked items was calculated by dividing total manufacturing order costs for non-stocked items by the number of orders for non-stocked products. Non-stocked products have additional costs associated with processing orders that went above and beyond the costs associated with a stocked product. The third step involved determining what the S"A allocation factor would be for calculating the S"A volume related costs. This allocation factor would then be applied to manufacturing COGS. The fourth and final step involved the calculation of the operating profit based on backing out volume related costs from sales revenues followed by deducting S"A and manufacturing order costs from the resulting gross margin to arrive at a operating profit.

In our second assumption, instead of using the cost of goods per cases in 1986, we try to use the percentage it counts in the total expenses which is 50.4% and to find the sales needed to break-even. The detail of the calculation is shown in the answer for questions d. The result is that 95,635, a little bit higher than the estimated sales of 90,000.

Explain how a profit maximizing firm determines its optimal level of output, using marginal revenue and marginal cost as criteria:

Given the use of each resource in the sales fulfillment cycle, determine the profitability of each customer.

Is there a way to estimate the cost of services and product to customers such that Stuart’s Branded Foods can be competitive in their market? Use the illustrations of the two customers to demonstrate your approach. What would be the selling price per kit or per cup for each customer?

Companies strive to choose not only the best marketing channels, but also the best profitable channel. A profitable channel can promote and successfully sell out of a product that might not otherwise turn a profit for their producers (New Charter University 2015). “The calculations from the cost accountant for the retail segment accounts were 60 percent of sales, and for the foodservice segment accounts were 40 percent. The cost accountant believes that both channels are profitable. The accountant also believes that the company achieves an overall average gross margin of 60 percent on its sales (Bowersox, D. J., Closs, D. J., Cooper, M. B.,

11) By how much would the profit contribution of product A has to increase before it will be profitable to produce A?

c. Why did each of American’s competitors react to the fare changes the way they did?

6. There is rich cost data given in the case. This must be used to understand how much profits / market share LT can achieve at various production levels ( we must assume that they product what they sell)

In (Table 3) and (Table 4) we apply these allocation rates with Customers A and B to illustrate how costs are affected by the ordering habits of customers

Under the original costing system used by Dakota Office Products, Customer A is shown to be slightly less profitable than Customer B. From the calculations above, we see that Customer A is slightly profitable at 0.3% profit as a percent of sales, and Customer B is not profitable, at a loss of (7.1%). We observe that Customer A is a consumer of low-cost services and generally pay their bills within 30 days unlike customer B who took 90 days or more. Timely servicing of debt led to profitability of Customer A.

Customers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

This equation is solved for the sales volume in units. c. In the graphical approach, sales revenue and total expenses are graphed. The break-even point occurs at the intersection of the total revenue and total expense lines. 8-2 The term unit contribution margin refers to the contribution that