Problem Set 2: Analysis using Spreadsheets

(Data Tables, Scenario Manager and Goal Seek)

1. Advertising Budget Decision
Refer to Advertising Budget Decision problem in Problem Set 1.
a. What happens to profit if unit costs rise to $26 from $25? What is the percentage
change in profit in this case?
b. What happens if we spend an additional $1000 in Q1 for advertisement? What is
the percentage change in profit?
c. What happens to profit in the above two cases if sales is calculated using the
following relationship:
𝑆𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑠 = 3000 + 0.1 × 𝐴𝑑𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 × 𝑠𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟
d. What happens to profit if we double the price, i.e., $80?
e. What happens to the value of profit if we vary the unit cost from $20 to $30 in
steps of $1? Create a graph to depict the relationship between unit cost and profit.
f. How is profit affected by both Q1 and Q2 advertising? Show the results by varying
Q1 and Q2 advertising from $5000 to $15000 in steps of $1000.
g. What happens to profit in the following scenarios:
Scenario Unit Price Unit Cost Overhead
Optimistic $50 $20 12%
Pessimistic $35 $30 18%
Base $40 $25 15%

h. Determine the breakeven unit cost.

2. SwimSkin Inc.
Refer to SwimSkin Inc. problem in Problem Set 1.
a. Florian Fortescue, VP of Marketing at SwimSkin Inc., is apprehensive about the
sales group’s estimate of the number of units sold. What if the figure is incorrect?
Florian wants to understand what the revenue, contribution margin and profit before
taxes would be if the number of units sold at $129.95 varied from 500 to 5000, in
increments of 500 units. Build an appropriate data table to help him. Contribution
margin is calculated by subtracting variable costs from revenue and represents the
amount of revenue that contributes to covering the fixed expenses of the company.
b. What happens to the data table in (a), when manufacturing cost per unit changes
from $75.75 to $95 and marketing cost is reduced from $75,000 to $60,000?
c. Florian also wants to see how profit is affected by different selling prices and units
sold. The company has a policy that all prices must end in 9.95. So, Florian wants to
use prices that range from $119.95 to $159.95 with an increment of $10. As before,
units sold can be varied from 500 to 5000, in increments of 500. Build an appropriate
data table for him. What happens to the profits in this data table if the variable
manufacturing cost is reduced to $70 per unit?
d. Create a data table showing the effect of change of marketing costs from $25,000
to $125,000 in increments of $25,000 on profit before taxes.
e. How does the profit vary as marketing costs vary from $25,000 to $125,000 in
increments of $25,000 and prices vary from $99.95 to $149.95 in increments of $5?
f. Show the effect on profit for the following three scenarios:
Scenario Unit Price Units Sold
Worst case $99.95 2500
Likely case $129.95 3000
Best case $149.95 4000

3. Honeydukes Co.
Refer to Honeydukes Co. problem in Problem Set 1.
a. What is the breakeven value of the open-market grape price?
b. Using a data table, show how profit varies as a function of the price set for raisins.
Cover a range from $1.80 to $2.80 in steps of $0.10.
c. Using a data table, show how profit varies as a function of the price set for raisins
and the amount of grapes brought under contract. Cover a range from $1.80 to $2.80
(in steps of $0.10) for the price and a range from 0.5 million pounds to 1.5 million
pounds of grapes bought under contract (in steps of 0.1 million).
d. What happens to profit in the following scenarios?
Scenario Open-market Grape Price/lb
Low $0.25
Medium $0.30
High $0.35

4. F1 Night City Race

The Formula 1 car race is coming to town. This is the first time the race is held in a
city street at night. This will help to boost tourism for a short while and increase the
city's global visibility. To help defray the massive costs in hosting the race, during
the race, the city's tourism authority is going to levy a charge on hotels and this
charge is 30% of the revenue. The overall estimation is that hotels can charge up to
three times their usual rate for each room and still see full occupancy. Hotel general
manager Tom Hawkes wants to understand the situation better before he makes the
decision on pricing. He is skeptical that room occupancy will be full at such high
room rates. The fixed cost and the unit variable costs are respectively $100 and $10.
Assume that there are 100 rooms available with Hawkes.
a. Build the base case spreadsheet models for two cases: i) Occupancy is 80% and
ii) 𝑂𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑝𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑦 = 1.7 – 0.00175 × 𝑅𝑜𝑜𝑚 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒.
b. At what room rate, will Tom Hawkes breakeven when occupancy is 80%?
c. How does the profit vary when the government levy varies from 20% to 50%?
Assume the occupancy rate to be 80%.

5. Mini Cauldron Cakes

You are trying to determine the price and the advertising for Mini Cauldron Cakes.
The annual demand for the cakes equals 500 − 3𝑝 + 10𝑎0.5, where 𝑝 is the price of
the cakes (per pack) in dollars and 𝑎 is hundreds of dollars spent on advertising the
cakes. The annual fixed cost of selling the cakes is $8,000, and the unit variable cost
of producing the cakes (per pack) is $15.
a. Create the base case spreadsheet model.
b. How does the profit vary for a variation in price between $10 and $100 per pack
(in steps of $10) and amount of advertising between $100 and $2000 (in steps of
$100)?

6. Acme Company
Acme Company is organizing a workshop for aspiring online content creators. The
fixed cost for organizing such workshops in $15,000. It must pay the 10 speakers
$700 each and the hotel $300 for food/lodging costs for all participants. Acme now
needs to decide how much to charge each workshop participant (who is not a
speaker). Last year, Acme charged $1200 for each such participant and the number
of such participants who registered for the workshop was 42.
a) Create the base case spreadsheet model to help Acme decide how much to charge
the participants. You can use the last year’s charges and no. of registered participants
to create the base case model.
b) How does Acme’s profit vary if the charge for the participants varies from $600
to $1500? Use the appropriate data table.
c) How many paying participants must register for Acme to breakeven?
7. Bob’s Woodworking Shop
Bob owns a woodworking shop where he builds picnic tables and Muskoka chairs.
He charges $250 for each picnic table and $80 for each Muskoka chair. It costs him
$105 in materials and $50 in labour to build a picnic table. It costs him $30 in
materials and $30 in labour to build a Muskoka chair. Demand for picnic tables is
relatively constant at 30 tables per summer season. Demand for Muskoka chair
increases with his investment in advertising. Based on his past experience, he
believes that the relationship between advertising and demand for Muskoka chairs
is as follows:
125
𝐷𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑑 =
1 + 5𝑒 −0.005×𝐴𝑑𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑑
Bob wants to decide how much he should invest in advertising.
a. Build the base case spreadsheet model. You can use the base case advertising
spend to be $100.
b. Build a one-way data table for Bob to evaluate the profit as well as the number of
Muskoka chairs sold for various investments in advertising ($0 to $2,500, in steps
of $250).
c. What are the effects of the following three scenarios on the profit for Muskoka
chairs? All costs are unit costs.

Scenario Labour Cost Material Cost

High labour cost/high material cost $80 $140
Medium labour cost/medium material cost $60 $110
Low labour cost/low material cost $40 $90