One source of new-product ideas is competitors and Steven Fischer recently joined Frankie as well as Alex Specialty Products as a brand manager. His new boss told him, we don't have a budget for new-product development. We just observer our competitors' new-product introductions as well as offer knockoffs of any that look like they will be successful. 1. Is this practice ethical and Why or why not and Justify your answer.
2. Give four instances of products that have been introduced based on similar products

Blue computers, a major pc manufacturer in the united states, currently has plants in kentucky and pennsylvania. the kentucky plant has a capacity of 1 million units a year and the pennsylvania plant has a capacity of 1.5 million units a year. the firm divides the united states into five markets: northeast, southeast, midwest, south, and west. each pc sells for $1,000. the firm anticipates a 50 perc~nt growth in demand (in each region) this year (after which demand will stabilize) and wants to build a plant with a capacity of 1.5 million units per year to accommodate the growth. potential sites being considered are in north carolina and california. currently the firm pays federal, state, and local taxes on the income from each plant. federal taxes are 20 percent of income, and all state and local taxes are 7 percent of income in each state. north carolina has offered to reduce taxes for the next 10 years from 7 percent to 2 percent. blue computers would like to take the tax break into consideration when planning its network. consider income over the next 10 years in your analysis. assume that all costs remain unchanged over the 10 years. use a discount factor of 0.1 for your analysis. annual fixed costs, production and shipping costs per unit, and current regional demand (before the 50 percent growth) are shown in table 5-13. (a) if blue computers sets an objective of minimizing total fixed and variable costs, where should they build the new plant? how should the network be structured? (b) if blue computers sets an objective of maximizing after-tax profits, where should they build the new plant? how should the network be structured? variable production and shipping cost ($/unit) annual fixed cost northeast southeast midwest south west (million$) kentucky 185 180 175 175 200 150 pennsylvania 170 190 180 200 220 200 n. carolina 180 180 185 185 215 150 california 220 220 195 195 175 150 demand ('000 units/month) 700 400 400 300 600

Krier industries has just completed its sales forecasts and its marketing department estimates that the company will sell 43,800 units during the upcoming year. in the past, management has maintained inventories of finished goods at approximately 3 months' sales. however, the estimated inventory at the start of the year of the budget period is only 7,300 units. sales occur evenly throughout the year. what is the estimated production level (units) for the first month of the upcoming budget year?

The monthly demand equation for an electric utility company is estimated to be p equals 60 minus left parenthesis 10 superscript negative 5 baseline right parenthesis x, where p is measured in dollars and x is measured in thousands of killowatt-hours. the utility has fixed costs of $3 comma 000 comma 000 per month and variable costs of $32 per 1000 kilowatt-hours of electricity generated, so the cost function is upper c left parenthesis x right parenthesis equals 3 times 10 superscript 6 baseline plus 32 x. (a) find the value of x and the corresponding price for 1000 kilowatt-hours that maximize the utility's profit. (b) suppose that the rising fuel costs increase the utility's variable costs from $32 to $38, so its new cost function is upper c 1 left parenthesis x right parenthesis equals 3 times 10 superscript 6 baseline plus 38 x. should the utility pass all this increase of $6 per thousand kilowatt-hours on to the consumers?