The process of gathering information about the competitive environment, including competitors' plans, activities, and products, to improve a company's ability to succeed is the definition of
a. feedback
b. information
c. competitive intelligence
d. data

Areal estate agent is considering changing her cell phone plan. there are three plans to choose from, all of which involve a monthly service charge of $20. plan a has a cost of $.42 a minute for daytime calls and $.17 a minute for evening calls. plan b has a charge of $.52 a minute for daytime calls and $.15 a minute for evening calls. plan c has a flat rate of $80 with 275 minutes of calls allowed per month and a charge of $.38 per minute beyond that, day or evening. a. determine the total charge under each plan for this case: 150 minutes of day calls and 70 minutes of evening calls in a month. (do not round intermediate calculations. round your answer to 2 decimal places. omit the "$" sign in your response.)c. if the agent will use the service for daytime calls, over what range of call minutes will each plan be optimal? (round each answer to the nearest whole number. include the indifference point itself in each answer.)d. suppose that the agent expects both daytime and evening calls. at what point (i. e., percentage of total call minutes used for daytime calls) would she be indifferent between plans a and b?

Kumar consulting operates several stock investment portfolios that are used by firms for investment of pension plan assets. last year, one portfolio had a realized return of 12.6 percent and a beta coefficient of 1.15. the average t-bond rate was 7 percent and the realized rate of return on the s& p 500 was 12 percent. what was the portfolio's alpha?

Thomas kratzer is the purchasing manager for the headquarters of a large insurance company chain with a central inventory operation. thomas's fastest-moving inventory item has a demand of 6,000 units per year. the cost of each unit is $100, and the inventory carrying cost is $10 per unit per year. the average ordering cost is $30 per order. it takes about 5 days for an order to arrive, and the demand for 1 week is 120 units. (this is a corporate operation, and the are 250 working days per year.)a) what is the eoq? b) what is the average inventory if the eoq is used? c) what is the optimal number of orders per year? d) what is the optimal number of days in between any two orders? e) what is the annual cost of ordering and holding inventory? f) what is the total annual inventory cost, including cost of the 6,000 units?