nost widely circulated publications into a database. Rather than manually clipping and photocopying articles of interest and maling them to its clients, employees eloctronically input thones trom story and can prepare comments for follow$-$up interviews befor clients are instantly notified via an online network. If the story is of interest, ll is clectronically transmilted, so the dient othen has the mailed. The price charged to the client is $$8\mathrm{.}00$ per clipping. The pubication hits the street. The manual process has fixed costs of $$410,000$ per year and variable costs of $$8\mathrm{.}20$ pere dipping client.

a$.$ If the same price is charged for either process, what is the annual volume beyond which the automated process is more attractive? $$ clippings. $($Entor your rosponse rounded to the nearest whole number.$)$

b$.$ The present volume of business is $230,000$ clippings per year. Many of the clippings sent with the current process are not of interest to the cliont or are multiple coples of the same tlory appearny in several publications. The news clipping service believes that by improving service and by lowering the price to $$5\mathrm{.}00$ per story, modernization will increase volume to $800,000$ dories transmined per year.

Should the clipping service modernize?

Yes

No

c$.$ If the forecasted increase in business is too optimistic, at what volume will the new process break even? $$ clippings. $($Enter your response rounded to the nearost whole number$)$