2- A local car dealer is advertising two leasing options for its new XT 3000 series sports car. Option A: is a standard 24-month lease of $1150 per month. In addition, this option requires a down payment of $4500, plus a $1000 refundable initial deposit. In option A, the lease payments are due at the beginning of every month. For example, the first lease payment (equal to $1150) is due at the beginning of month 1. Option B: In this option, the company offers a 24-month lease plan that has only a single up-front payment of $31000 (which is paid at the beginning of month one) Note: The initial deposit in option A will be refunded to the customer at the end of month 24. Assume an interest rate of 6% compounded monthly. Which option is better for the customer

An office manager is concerned with declining productivity. despite the fact that she regularly monitors her clerical staff four times each day—at 9: 00 am, 11: 00 am, 1: 00 pm, and again at 3: 00 pm—office productivity has declined 30 percent since she assumed the helm one year ago. would you recommend that the office manager invest more time monitoring the productivity of her clerical staff? explain.

Onsider the following subscription behavior information from genie, a web site that provides tools for constructing a family tree (ancestor search). subscriptions cost $9.99 per month, but you are charged for the entire year at the time of purchase. there is a one-year minimum term when you sign up for the service. once purchased, subscriptions are set to renew automatically unless the subscriber cancels them. when a membership renews, it renews for a one-year term and again you are charged for the entire year. there are no variable costs associated with providing this service to an individual customer, but genie does engage in customer relationship activities that they believe will increase customer retention. these customer relationship activities cost genie about $10 per year per customer. based on a sample of 1000 customers that joined genie five years ago, near the time when the company was founded, they were able to determine how many of those customers remained subscribers in the second year, third year etc. based on this information, genie calculated the average annual retention rate to be 20%. genie uses an annual discount rate of 8%. a. last year, genie spent $10,000 placing advertisements on google. genie management believes that these advertisements were responsible for about 300 new subscribers. would you recommend to genie management that they purchase more google ads? b. suppose a newly-introduced loyalty program increases the number of customers that remained to 30%. does this new data change your answer to 9.a? c. do you have any hesitations or concerns about making recommendations to management based on your above estimate of customer lifetime value?

In the 1970s, kmart used blue light specials to encourage customers to flock to a particular department having a temporary sale. a spinning blue light activated for approximately 30 seconds, and then an in-store announcement informed shoppers of the special savings in the specific department. over time, loyal kmart shoppers learned to flock to the department with the spinning blue light before any announcement of special savings occurred. if kmart was employing classical conditioning techniques, what role did the spinning blue light play?