MGMT 250

Case 1

Student Write Up

Commentary:

The ability to complete analysis is a good skill to have. However, it is rendered nearly meaningless if one cannot also convey the meaning behind the results to others. The purpose of the analysis files is to give you practice doing exactly that. For each one, I want you to spend some time thinking about what the most important pieces of the output are. I have included some guidance questions below to help focus your thinking. Two things should be noted here. First, there may be other things that students feel are important to highlight. And second, under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should the student simply list answers to the questions. The goal of this is for students to compose a written report that could be delivered to executives who make decisions about the matter at hand. Simply answering the questions one by one (or in bullet format) is an automatic 0.

Instructions:

Please compose an executive summary on the break-even analysis you completed for this case. The report should be no more than 1-2 pages (remember, its a summary so brevity matters!). Students must submit the finished product to PLATO as a Microsoft Word file (.docx extension). Other file formats may not open and will receive a grade of 0 if this is the case.

Each student is required to submit their own unique executive summary. So while the calculations are done as part of a group, the analysis is not completed as a group. To be clear, students can brainstorm and share ideas, but students must write their own analysis in the executive summary.

Guidance questions have been provided below to help direct your thinking. However, the report should NOT simply be answers to the questions one at a time. In these analysis assignment, students should be drafting a cohesive document that discusses the findings of their analyses. The document needs to balance readability, brevity, and accuracy. It should have an introduction to the matter at hand, present any relevant numbers in an aesthetically pleasing format that is easy to read, have a brief description of what the numbers mean and what they imply, and then draw any conclusions or make recommendations.

The student should spend some time thinking about the best way to display and discuss their results so that a reasonably well-versed executive could read the report and have it makes sense by itself. This means that in order to discuss a number in your report, you need to include it somewhere and in a format that is easy to read. Essentially, the report is an Executive Summary of the students findings. Examples of past reports and where they did well or went wrong are provided in the resources folder. Additionally, spending some time on Google to review executive summaries might be beneficial.

Guidance Questions

Please note that students do not necessarily need to answer every one of these questions. But there are some that are probably more important than others. It will be up to the student to determine which ones definitely need to be included, and to coherently form a summary based on the answers to those questions.

- What is the total and per-game fixed cost that the university should expect to incur as a result of running the concession stands?

- How do these fixed costs relate to the individual menu items?

- What are the breakeven quantities of each menu item? How do these quantities measure up against the number of fans in attendance? For example, if a stand had to sell 10 hot dogs and there was only 1 fan, that would be ridiculous because very few people eat 10 hot dogs in one sitting. Admittedly there are some who do (and theres nothing wrong with this!), but its not common. So how do your numbers stack up? Does it make sense to need to sell this many of the item? Are there any items that we should expect to sell more/less of? How do we accomplish that?

- Repeat the previous set of questions, but this time in relation to the quantity required to reach the target profit

- What is the per-person spending figures for both total attendees and non-student attendees?

o Are these figures reasonable?

Does the student feel that people will spend this on average when attending such an event? Why or why not? Bear in mind that these figures are per person, not per-group or per-family. For example, if the average spending amount is $12, this would mean a family of four would need to purchase $48 worth of items.

How many menu items must the average attendee purchase to get to this figure? Is it likely that every attendee will purchase this number of items?

- If any of the figures calculated seem unreasonable, what changes to the menu would you suggest the management team make?

- Is it likely that the stadium will meet its target profit goals?

- What would the per-person spending need to be on average so that the stadium met its profit targets on each product? Does this spending seem reasonable? Why or why not?

- If the management team wants to raise prices (and therefore profit margins), what impact do you think this will have on the number of items sold?

- As a final note in the report, the student should compare the break-even quantities calculated by hand and when using the template. Based on this comparison, should the executives be willing to trust the templates calculations moving forward?

For this report, the student will be graded on a number of factors. The format of the report will matter things like grammar, terminology, spelling, presentation of data. In addition, the actual content and conclusions drawn will be a factor in determining a students overall grade.