Software Solutions, Inc., was started by two young software engineers to market SpamBlocker, a software application they had written that screens incoming e-mail messages and eliminates unsolicited mass mailings. Sales of the software have been good at 50,000 units a month, but the company has been losing money as shown below: Sales (50,000 units $25 per unit) $ 1,250,000 Variable cost (50,000 units $6 per unit) 300,000 Contribution margin 950,000 Fixed expenses 960,000 Net operating loss $ (10,000) The companys only variable cost is the $6 fee it pays to another company to reproduce the software on CDs, print manuals, and package the result in an attractive box for sale to consumers. Monthly fixed selling and administrative expenses are $960,000. The companys marketing manager has been arguing for some time that the software is priced too high. She estimates that every 5% decrease in price will yield an 8% increase in unit sales. The marketing manager would like your help in preparing a presentation to the companys owners concerning the pricing issue.

Required:
1.	To help the marketing manager prepare for her presentation, she has asked you to fill in the blanks in the following table. The selling prices in the table were computed by successively decreasing the selling price by 5%. The estimated unit sales were computed by successively increasing the unit sales by 8%. For example, $23.75 is 5% less than $25.00 and 54,000 units is 8% more than 50,000 units. (Round your answers to the nearest whole dollar amount.)

3a.	Compute the price elasticity of demand for the SpamBlocker software (Negative amount should be indicated by a minus sign. Do not round intermediate calculations and round your final answer to 1 decimal place.)

3b.	Based on your calculations in Requirement 3a, what is the profit-maximizing price? (Round "Price elasticity of demand" to 1 decimal place.)

4a.	The owners have invested $2,000,000 in the company and feel that they should be earning at least 2% per month on these funds. If the absorption costing approach to pricing were used, what would be the target selling price based on the current sales of 50,000 units? (Round intermediate calculations and final answer to 2 decimal places.)

4b.	What do you think would happen to the net operating income of the company if this price were charged?

5a.

If the owners of the company are dissatisfied with the net operating income and return on investment at the selling price you computed in (3) above, should they increase the selling price?

	Yes
	No

5b.

Which of the following steps should the owners take to increase net operating income? (You may select more than one answer. Single click the box with a check mark for correct answers and double click to empty the box for the wrong answers.)

	Decrease product costs
	Increase perceived value of product
	Increase selling costs
	Increase wastages