Karl and Kara own a business that specializes in providing outdoor adventure experiences for tourists. They employ a staff of eight adventure guides who are responsible for providing each client with a safe and enjoyable outdoor experience. Recently, Karl and Kara received a number of complaints about the guides from clients. Karl believes that the problem can be resolved by providing the guides with additional customer service and communication training. But Kara suggests that before investing resources into training, they should conduct a needs assessment to see if training is the best solution, and if so, which type of training would be the most beneficial.

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?