Randy Todd, Marketing Manager for Sporting Products, Inc

question 130

Multiple Choice

Randy Todd, marketing manager for Sporting Products, Inc. (SPI) , is thinking about how changes taking place among retailers in his channel might impact his strategy. SPI sells the products it produces through wholesalers and retailers. For example, SPI sells basketballs to Wholesale Supply for $8.00. Wholesale Supply uses a 20 percent markup and most of its "sport shop" retailer customers, like Robinson's Sporting Goods, use a 33 percent markup to arrive at the price they charge final consumers. However, one fast growing retail chain, Sports Depot, only uses a 20 percent markup for basketballs, even though it pays Wholesale Supply the same price as other retailers. Furthermore, Sports Depot occasionally lowers the price of basketballs and sells them at cost-to draw customers into its stores and stimulate sales of its pricey basketball shoes.
Sports Depot is also using other pricing approaches that are different from the sports shops that usually handle SPI products. For example, Sports Depot prices all of its baseball gloves at $20, $40, or $60-with no prices in between. There are three big bins - one for each price point.
Todd is also curious about how Sports Depot's new strategy to increase sales of tennis balls will work out. The basic idea is to sell tennis balls in large quantities to nonprofit groups who resell the balls to raise money. For example, a service organization at a local college bought 2,000 tennis balls printed with the college logo. Sports Depot charged $.50 each for the tennis balls-plus a $500 one-time charge for the stamp to print the logo. The service group plans to resell the tennis balls for $2.50 each and contribute the profits to a shelter for the homeless.
Todd is not certain if Sports Depot ideas will affect SPI's plans. For example, SPI is considering adding tennis racquets to the lines it produces. This would require a $500,000 addition to its factory as well as the purchase of new equipment that costs $1,000,000. The variable cost to produce a tennis racquet would be $20, but Todd thinks that SPI could sell the racquet at a wholesale price of $40 each. That would allow most retailers to add their normal markup and make a profit. However, if Sports Depot sells the racquet at a lower than normal price other retailers might decide to carry it.
If SPI uses average-cost pricing, a big problem will be:

• A) it ignores the demand curve for its products.
• B) fixed costs are too hard to estimate.
• C) the effects of variable costs are ignored.
• D) the desired profit cannot be included.

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Definitions:

Open-Minded

Means that a person is tolerant of divergent views and sensitive to the possibility of his or her own possible biases. An open-minded person respects the right of others to have different opinions.

One-Way Street

A situation or condition that allows movement or action in only one direction, often used metaphorically to describe a non-reciprocal relationship.

Acceptability

The quality of being accepted as appropriate, suitable, or worthy of approval.

Negative Evaluative Adjectives

Adjectives used to express a negative judgment or assessment of something.