1. Eastman Publishing Company is considering publishing an electronic textbook about spreadsheet applications for business. The fixed cost of manuscript preparation, textbook design, and web site construction is estimated to be $160,000. Variable processing costs are estimated to be $6 per book. The publisher plans to sell single-user access to the book for $46. a. Build a spreadsheet model to calculate the profit/loss for a given demand. What profit can be anticipated with a demand of 3,500 copies? b. Use a data table to vary demand from 1,000 to 6,000 in increments of 200 to assess the sensitivity of profit to demand. c. Use Goal Seek to determine the access price per copy that the publisher must charge to break even with a demand of 3,500 copies.

Economics: Private and Public Choice (MindTap Course List)
16th Edition
ISBN:9781305506725
Author:James D. Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup, Russell S. Sobel, David A. Macpherson
Publisher:James D. Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup, Russell S. Sobel, David A. Macpherson
Chapter24: Price-searcher Markets With High Entry Barriers
Section: Chapter Questions
Problem 14CQ
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1. Eastman Publishing Company is considering publishing an electronic textbook about spreadsheet applications for business. The fixed cost of manuscript preparation, textbook design, and web site construction is estimated to be $160,000. Variable processing costs are estimated to be $6 per book. The publisher plans to sell single-user access to the book for $46.

a. Build a spreadsheet model to calculate the profit/loss for a given demand. What profit can be anticipated with a demand of 3,500 copies?
b. Use a data table to vary demand from 1,000 to 6,000 in increments of 200 to assess the sensitivity of profit to demand.
c. Use Goal Seek to determine the access price per copy that the publisher must charge to break even with a demand of 3,500 copies.

d. Consider the following scenarios:

  Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3 Scenario 4 Scenario 5
Variable Cost/Book $6 $8 $12 $10 $11
Access Price $46 $50 $40 $50 $60
Demand 2,500 1,000 6,000 5,000 2,000

For each of these scenarios, the fixed cost remains $160,000. Use Scenario Manager to 
generate a summary report that gives the profit for each of these scenarios.

       d.1 Which scenario yields the highest profit? What is the highest profit?

       d.2 Which scenario yields the lowest profit? What is the lowest profit?

Consider again Problem 1. Through a series of web-based experiments, Eastman has created a predictive model that estimates demand as a function of price. The predictive model is demand =4,000 - 6p, where p is the price of the e-book.

a. Update your spreadsheet model constructed for Problem 3 to take into account this demand function.
b. Use Goal Seek to calculate the price that results in breakeven.
c. Use a data table that varies price from $50 to $400 in increments of $25 to find the price that maximizes profit. 

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