You are a marketing director for a Mexican Taco Restaurant located in Lynchburg, VA. The average order size of your customers is $7.00 per order. That means that when all your food orders are divided by your total number of customers, the average order amount is $7.00.

 

Purpose

To assess your ability to:

• Develop a research plan to identify consumer perceptions and needs across competing offerings of a product.

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Overview

Recall from last week’s reading that satisfying your customers involves managing their expectations. Customers who are satisfied, whose expectations have been exceeded are likely to develop a degree of loyalty to your brand. Having satisfied and loyal customers results in a wide variety of benefits to your business. This raises and interesting question, one that you will begin to answer in this week’s assignment, that is “How do you know what your potential customers’ expectations are?” The answer of course is by conducting market research.

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Action Items

• Write a 1 page Research plan in which you layout how you will find out what makes hotel patrons satisfied and repeat customers.
  • Given this research question, what kind of research framework will you use?
  • What kind of data will you collect? What methods will you use to collect that data?
  • How will you measure or analyze the data? What kind of sampling procedure will you use?
  • Refer to pages 100 to 105 of your textbook as a guide.

Here is the description of the project.  I have done some of the work in Excel, but it isn’t coming out right and I need to look at a completed project so I can basically see how to complete this :(.  The rough draft was due four days ago and is late currently.  I need the draft and the actual project completed.

 

Your Course Project

Financial Statement Analysis Project—A Comparative Analysis of Kohl’s Corporation and J.C. Penney Corporation

 

Below is the link for the financial statements for Kohl’s Corporation for the 2010 fiscal year ending January 29, 2011. Under the term Groupings Filter, change the term All Forms to Annual Filings using the drop-down arrow and press Search.

 

You should then scroll down and select the 10k dated 3/18/2011 and choose to download in Word or PDF format.

 

http://www.kohlscorporation.com/InvestorRelations/sec-filings.htm

 

Below is the link for the financial statements for J.C. Penney Corporation for the 2010 fiscal year ending January 29, 2011. Under the term Groupings Filter, change the term All Forms to Annual Filings using the drop-down arrow and press Search.

 

You should then scroll down and select the 10k dated 3/29/2011 and choose to download in Word format.

 

http://ir.jcpenney.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=70528&p=irol-sec

 

A sample project template is available for download in Doc Sharing. The sample project compares the ratio performance of Tootsie Roll and Hershey using the 2012 financial statements of Tootsie Roll and Hershey provided at their websites.

Description

This course contains a Course Project. You will be required to submit one draft of the project at the end of Week 5 and the final, completed project at the end of Week 7. Using the financial statements for Kohl’s Corporation and J.C. Penney Corporation, respectively, you will calculate and compare the financial ratios listed further down this document for the fiscal year ending 2010 and prepare your comments about two companies’ performance based on your ratio calculations. The entire project will be graded by the instructor at the end of the final submission in Week 7, and one grade will be assigned for the entire project.

 

Overall Requirements

For the Final Submission:

 

Your final Excel workbook submission should contain the following items. You cannot use any other software but Excel to complete this project.

1.     A completed worksheet title page tab, which is really a coversheet with your name, the course, the date, your instructor’s name, and the title of the project.

2.     A completed worksheet profiles tab, which contains a one-paragraph description regarding each company with information about their histories, what products they sell, where they are located, and so on.

3.     All 18 ratios for each company, with the supporting calculations and commentary on your worksheet ratio tab. Supporting calculations must be shown either as a formula or as text typed into a different cell. The ratios are listed further down this document. Your comments for each ratio should include more than just a definition of the ratio. You should focus on interpreting each ratio number for each company and support your comments with the numbers found in the ratios.

4.     The Summary and Conclusions worksheet tab, which is an overall comparison of how each company compares in terms of the major category of ratios described in Chapter 13 of your textbook. A nice way to conclude is to state which company you think is the better investment and why.

5.     The Bibliography worksheet tab must contain at least your textbook as a reference. Any other information you use to profile the companies should also be cited as a reference.

Required Ratios for Final Project Submission

1.     Earnings per Share of Common Stock

1. Current Ratio
2. Gross Profit Margin
3. Rate of Return on Sales (Net Profit Margin) 
4. Inventory Turnover
5. Days’ Inventory Outstanding (DIO)

7.     Accounts Receivable Turnover

8.     Days’ Sales Outstanding (DSO)

1. Asset Turnover
2. Rate of Return on Total Assets (ROA)
3. Debt Ratio
4. Times Interest Earned Ratio
5. Dividend Yield [For the purposes of this ratio, use Yahoo Finance to look up current dividend yield and stock price; just note the date that you looked up this information]
6. Rate of Return on Common Stockholders’ Equity (ROE)
7. Free Cash Flow
8. Price/Earnings Ratio (Multiple) [For the purpose of this ratio, for Oracle, use the market price per share on May 30, 2011 and for Microsoft, use the market price per share on June 30, 2011.]

The Excel files uploaded to the Dropbox should not include any unnecessary numbers or information (such as previous years’ ratios, ratios that were not specifically asked for in the project, and so on).

 

Please upload your final submission to the Week 7 Dropbox by Sunday at the end of Week 7.

For the Draft:

 

Create an Excel spreadsheet or use the project template to show your computations for the first 10 ratios listed above. The more you can complete regarding the other requirements, the closer you will be to completion when Week 7 arrives. Supporting calculations must be shown either as a formula or as text typed into a different cell. If you plan on creating your own spreadsheet, please follow the format provided in the Tootsie Roll and Hershey template file. 

 

Please upload your draft submission to the Week 5 Dropbox by Sunday at the end of Week 5.

 

Other Helpful information:

 

If you feel uncomfortable with Excel, you can find many helpful references on Excel by performing a Google search.

 

Chapter 13 contains ratio calculations and comparison comments related to Apple and Dell, so you will likely find this information helpful.

 

BigCharts.com provides historical stock quotes.

 

Either APA or MLA style can be used to complete the references on your Bibliography tab. There is a tutorial for APA and MLA style within the Syllabus.

Grade Information

The entire project will be graded by the instructor at the end of the final submission in Week 7, and one grade will be assigned for the entire project. The project will count for 18% of your overall course grade.