Chapter 6, Problem 30QP

Seas Beginning sells clothing by mail order. An important question is when to strike a customer from the companys mailing list. At present, the company strikes a customer from its mailing list if a customer fails to order from six consecutive catalogs. The company wants to know whether striking a customer from its list after a customer fails to order from four consecutive catalogs results in a higher profit per customer. The following data are available: If a customer placed an order the last time she received a catalog, then there is a 20% chance she will order from the next catalog. If a customer last placed an order one catalog ago, there is a 16% chance she will order from the next catalog she receives. If a customer last placed an order two catalogs ago, there is a 12% chance she will order from the next catalog she receives. If a customer last placed an order three catalogs ago, there is an 8% chance she will order from the next catalog she receives. If a customer last placed an order four catalogs ago, there is a 4% chance she will order from the next catalog she receives. If a customer last placed an order five catalogs ago, there is a 2% chance she will order from the next catalog she receives. It costs 2 to send a catalog, and the average profit per order is 30. Assume a customer has just placed an order. To maximize expected profit per customer, would Seas Beginning make more money canceling such a customer after six nonorders or four nonorders?

Suppose you currently have a portfolio of three stocks, A, B, and C. You own 500 shares of A, 300 of B, and 1000 of C. The current share prices are 42.76, 81.33, and, 58.22, respectively. You plan to hold this portfolio for at least a year. During the coming year, economists have predicted that the national economy will be awful, stable, or great with probabilities 0.2, 0.5, and 0.3. Given the state of the economy, the returns (one-year percentage changes) of the three stocks are independent and normally distributed. However, the means and standard deviations of these returns depend on the state of the economy, as indicated in the file P11_23.xlsx. a. Use @RISK to simulate the value of the portfolio and the portfolio return in the next year. How likely is it that you will have a negative return? How likely is it that you will have a return of at least 25%? b. Suppose you had a crystal ball where you could predict the state of the economy with certainty. The stock returns would still be uncertain, but you would know whether your means and standard deviations come from row 6, 7, or 8 of the P11_23.xlsx file. If you learn, with certainty, that the economy is going to be great in the next year, run the appropriate simulation to answer the same questions as in part a. Repeat this if you learn that the economy is going to be awful. How do these results compare with those in part a?

An automobile manufacturer is considering whether to introduce a new model called the Racer. The profitability of the Racer depends on the following factors: The fixed cost of developing the Racer is triangularly distributed with parameters 3, 4, and 5, all in billions. Year 1 sales are normally distributed with mean 200,000 and standard deviation 50,000. Year 2 sales are normally distributed with mean equal to actual year 1 sales and standard deviation 50,000. Year 3 sales are normally distributed with mean equal to actual year 2 sales and standard deviation 50,000. The selling price in year 1 is 25,000. The year 2 selling price will be 1.05[year 1 price + 50 (% diff1)] where % diff1 is the number of percentage points by which actual year 1 sales differ from expected year 1 sales. The 1.05 factor accounts for inflation. For example, if the year 1 sales figure is 180,000, which is 10 percentage points below the expected year 1 sales, then the year 2 price will be 1.05[25,000 + 50( 10)] = 25,725. Similarly, the year 3 price will be 1.05[year 2 price + 50(% diff2)] where % diff2 is the percentage by which actual year 2 sales differ from expected year 2 sales. The variable cost in year 1 is triangularly distributed with parameters 10,000, 12,000, and 15,000, and it is assumed to increase by 5% each year. Your goal is to estimate the NPV of the new car during its first three years. Assume that the company is able to produce exactly as many cars as it can sell. Also, assume that cash flows are discounted at 10%. Simulate 1000 trials to estimate the mean and standard deviation of the NPV for the first three years of sales. Also, determine an interval such that you are 95% certain that the NPV of the Racer during its first three years of operation will be within this interval.