Broad differentiation strategies generally work best in market circumstances where: a. buyer needs and uses of a product are diverse and not fully satisfied by a standardized product. b. most buyers have similar needs and use the product in the same ways. c. the products of rivals are weakly differentiated and most competitors are resorting to clever advertising to try to set their product offerings apart. d. buyers are price sensitive and product switching costs are quite low. e. market competition revolves around slowly evolving product features.

Imagine us is a startup that offers high definition 3d prenatal ultrasounds for high-end customers. the service process includes four activities that are conducted in the sequence described below. (the time required for each activity is shown in parentheses): activity 1: welcome a patient and explain the procedure. (20 minutes)activity 2: prep the patient (e.g., show them to the room, apply ultrasound gel). (17 minutes) (*your id number represents the amount of time needed to complete this task)activity 3: take images. (5 minutes)activity 4: discuss diagnostic with patient. (20 minutes)at each location there are employees (servers) s1, s2, and s3. the assignment of tasks to servers is the following: s1 does activities 1 and 2.s2 does activity 3.s3 does activity 4.a. what is the capacity of this process (in customers per hour)? b. suppose 3 patients arrive every hour on average. ignoring any “start of day” or “end of day” effects, what are the utilizations of all three servers (%)? c. suppose each activity can be done by any server and any server can do any set of activities. however, each activity is done by only one server. for example, a possible assignment includes: s1 does activity 1, s2 does activity 2, and s3 does activities 3 and 4. of course, the original assignment of servers to activities is also feasible. what is the maximum capacity of the process (in customers per hour)? d. now consider the capacity measures in (c) and (a), what is the percentage change? why can you improve capacity without using additional resources? (there is no free lunch, right? )note: for all hw assignments, show your process of getting the results. only providing the final answers is not acceptable and will get 0%. if necessary, use a separate sheet of paper to show your work.

Consider the following two projects. both have costs of $5,000 in year 1. project 1 provides benefits of $2,000 in each of the first four years only. the second provides benefits of $2,000 for each of years 6 to 10 only. compute the net benefits using a discount rate of 6 percent. repeat using a discount rate of 12 percent. what can you conclude from this exercise?

Which is cheaper: eating out or dining in? the mean cost of a flank steak, broccoli, and rice bought at the grocery store is $13.04 (money.msn website, november 7, 2012). a sample of 100 neighborhood restaurants showed a mean price of $12.75 and a standard deviation of $2 for a comparable restaurant meal. a. develop appropriate hypotheses for a test to determine whether the sample data support the conclusion that the mean cost of a restaurant meal is less than fixing a comparable meal at home. b. using the sample from the 100 restaurants, what is the p-value? c. at a = .05, what is your conclusion? d. repeat the preceding hypothesis test using the critical value approach