Select a company, government agency or any other service outlet and one of its products that interest you to study from an applied economic point of view. You are encouraged to look up articles about your chosen company or agency utilizing such sources as Business Week, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Marketing Communications, Media-Scope, Advertising Age, Law Enforcement Magazines, Health Magazines, and etc. If possible, you should visit or correspond with the company or agency, contact distributors or agents, and discuss the product(s) or service(s) with actual or potential users. Collect economic data in the product(s) or service(s) you have chosen.
A. At the end of this course, you should turn in a term paper that analyzes and estimates the demand of your chosen firm’s product(s) or service(s).
B. Assume that your company or agency is concerned about near-term economic conditions and wishes to obtain a qualitative forecast of sales or service in the upcoming quarter. Assume also that you are the market analyst for your company or agency planning to use one or more of the leading economic indicators (LEI) published by the US Department of Commerce to formulate your qualitative forecast. You can Google The Leading Economic Indicator (LEI).
C. Explain how the indicator or each of the indicators might affect future sales and/or service. (For example, if the average work week of production workers in manufacturing increased, explain the affect on your company’s sales.) Explain which or among these indicators would be most important in formulating your qualitative forecast.
Your paper will be graded on the following criteria:
1. Use of analytical economic concepts or models to analyze the company or agency and its product(s) or service(s). Explain your chosen model(s).
2. Degree to which information was sought and attained.
3. Quality of your analysis of the firm’s pricing.
4. Quality of your recommendations for future new or current product(s)/service(s) pricing.
