Instructions for Journal Entries
As part of your individual preparation, there is a required journal for quarters 2-6. Prior to each
team meeting, each team member should make their own assessment of the team’s overall
performance (reported on the balanced score card starting after the first few quarters) and then assess
the specific information for all aspects of the marketing mix (the product ratings or marketing
communications effectiveness, for instance). Although the first few quarters do not report the balanced
score card, you can still explain why you did what you did and then strategize based on that. Specifically,
for each quarter you should formulate your recommendations ahead of the team meeting and post your
analysis and conclusions in the journal. The journals serve as the team’s collective information site
(when preparing the final presentations) and replaces having to write a paper. I do not want a straight
restatement of information from the simulation. I want you to tell me what you think the information
means. What does your balanced scorecard result indicate? What were the significant driving factors to
those results? What aspects of your product, price, promotion, and distribution worked and didn’t and
why. Provide specific results and recommendations. Looking at past results is only part of the analysis
(the easy part in fact), you need to recommend forward actions for the next quarter’s moves.
At the team meeting, the decisions for the quarter should be finalized. After each team meeting,
each team member should defend their recommendations for the quarter’s decisions. If the team
agrees with your suggestions, you can note that as part of the next week’s journal. If the team
disagreed, explain the decision and rationale. If the team decides to adjust or change strategy, then
there should be a posting explaining the change. If I look at your team’s standings, I should be able to
get an idea of what the team was doing and why from the journals. The final presentation will have a
separate description handed out later which will utilize the journal information.

Carefully read the prompt below. Then, using the reading assigned for this week, answer the question in a two-page response.
Since being ratified in 1789, the Constitution has served as the ‘blueprint for government’ in the United States with only minor revisions. Since the 19th century, historians have debated the intent of the men that met in Philadelphia and the nature of the government they created. For this assignment, make an argument for which author, Zinn or Wood, you think has the more accurate stance on the purpose of the Founding Fathers in writing the Constitution. Was it written with an economic (Zinn) or political (Wood) purpose?
In your response paper, first, briefly outline each of the author’s arguments (do not just repeat the summary of the arguments on page 146, but summarize them in your own words), provide the two strongest pieces of evidence that support your position, and provide one piece of evidence that demonstrates the weaknesses of the opposing position.
Please make sure you read both arguments, as you will be required to discuss both in class.

This assignment asks you to analyze the relationship between style and representation in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.

Your grade will be based on the clarity and relevance of your thesis statement, clear and concise writing, and adherence to the assignment guidelines. Your paper must be double-spaced, include one-inch margins all-around, be no less and no more than three to five (3-5) pages long, and include:

A clear thesis statement in the following format: “In this paper I will show how (title of film) perpetuates (ideology) through the following stylistic choices: 1) ________, 2)_________, and 3) _________.
An analysis of ideology and visual style using at least three different sources listed in the bibliography on the class website.
Take care to cite your sources using the Chicago Manual of Style.
You will submit your paper via Turnitin on iLearn. It must be in Microsoft Word.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1axwWxc126CpX-sCfDw38MLMLOCYbquvp/view?usp=sharing

Respond to the questions and complete the problems.
Questions
In a Word document, respond to the following. Number your responses 1–3.
1. Define risk, and explain how it is measured.
2. Identify a source of firm-specific risk. What is the source of market risk?
3. Explain what the coefficient of variation measures.
Use references to support your responses as needed. Be sure to cite all references using correct APA style. Your responses should be free of grammar and spelling errors, demonstrating strong written communication skills.
Problems
In either a Word document or Excel spreadsheet, complete the following problems.
• You may solve the problems algebraically, or you may use a financial calculator or an Excel spreadsheet.
• If you choose to solve the problems algebraically, be sure to show your computations.
• If you use a financial calculator, show your input values.
• If you use an Excel spreadsheet, show your input values and formulas.
In addition to your solution to each computational problem, you must show the supporting work leading to your solution to receive credit for your answer.
1. Two years ago, Conglomco stock ended at $73.02 per share. Last year, the stock paid a $0.34 per share dividend. Conglomco stock ended last year at $77.24. If you owned 200 shares of Conglomco stock, what were your dollar return and percent return last year?
2. Calculate the coefficient of variation for the following three stocks. Then rank them by their level of total risk, from highest to lowest:
o Conglomco has an average return of 11 percent and standard deviation of 24 percent.
o Supercorp has an average return of 16 percent and standard deviation of 37 percent.
o Megaorg has an average return of 10 percent and standard deviation of 29 percent.
3. Year-to-date, Conglomco has earned a −1.64 percent return, Supercorp has earned a 5.69 percent return, and Megaorg has earned a 0.23 percent return. If your portfolio is made up of 40 percent Conglomco stock, 30 percent Supercorp stock, and 30 percent Megaorg stock, what is your portfolio return?

Telemedicine
With the majority of health-care costs spent for the treatment of chronic diseases and the reason for most emergency room visits being non-emergencies, the time is ripe for telemedicine. Patients are tapping their phones, tablets, and keyboards instead of making an office visit or trip to the emergency room. Technology makes it possible for doctors to consult with patients through Skype or FaceTime on smartphones, access medical tests via electronic medical records, and send a prescription to a patient’s local pharmacy—all from miles away. The telemedicine industry is still in its infancy, earning only $200 million in annual revenue, but it is predicted to increase to an almost $2 billion industry in just a few years. Technology isn’t the only reason for this industry’s growth. The HITECH Act encouraging electronic medical records is also adding fuel to this fire.
8-9. Research the telemedicine industry and describe two companies offering services. What are the pros and cons of offering medical services this way, and is there governmental or industry guidance for this industry?
8-10. In what stage of the product life cycle is telemedicine? What role has mobile technology played in evolution of this industry? Explain

Financial reports tell the story of an organization within a fiscal year. Annual financial reports are extremely valuable to government organizations because they give both the administrators in the organization and the public who are funding the organization a sense of where revenue is going.
In this Discussion, you analyze an organization’s comprehensive annual financial report (CAFR) and explain its value to the organization.
Review this week’s Learning Resources and reflect on the responsibility of government organizations to provide accurate financial reports to the public. Then, select a public organization and a specific CAFR from the selected organization. Public organization budgets are required by law to be available. An Internet search will yield an annual budget for your specific organization.

With these thoughts in mind:

Post a description of UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS. Then, provide an analysis of that organization’s CAFR. In your analysis, explain what the report tells the stakeholders of the organization and the value of the report to the organization.

Mikesell, J. L. (2018). Fiscal administration: Analysis and applications for the public sector (10th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth.
• Chapter 2, “The Logic of the Budget Process” (pp. 44-97)

Genito, M. (2013, February). Back to basics: An overview of governmental accounting and financial reporting. Retrieved from http://www.gfoa.org/sites/default/files/GFR_FEB_13_48.pdf

Governmental Accounting Standards Board. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.gasb.org

Internet Center for Management and Business Administration, Inc. (2010). Double-entry bookkeeping. Retrieved from http://www.quickmba.com/accounting/fin/double-entry

Case #10 Apple Pay
Apple Pay: Taking Mobile Payments Mainstream After leaving his office in Manhattan, Tag stopped at a nearby Panera to grab a Frontega Chicken Panini and Green Passion Power Smoothie as a quick dinner on his way to see some friends in Soho. Upon ordering, he held his Apple Watch to the contactless reader near the register, gently pressed his finger to the TouchID fingerprint sensor on the small screen, and let Apple Pay do the rest. Wanting to get across town as soon as possible, Tag used his Uber app to summon an UberX car. During the car ride, he remembered that he needed a couple of new dress shirts. With a few quick clicks on his watch, he selected the shirts through his Macy’s app. With a simple tap, he used Apple Pay to seamlessly complete the transaction. As he neared his destination, Tag added a tip to the bill for the ride through the Uber app, which he’d already configured to use Apple Pay as the default. With one simple press of his finger to TouchID on his watch, he exited the cab. Three purchases—offline, online, and, well, sort of in between—no wallet required. No traditional wallet, that is. This new reality—one that many early adopters are already living—is rapidly expanding toward what some experts predict will become the future for everyone. Folks like Tag don’t even carry traditional wallets anymore, only their mobile devices and perhaps an ID and a backup credit card for retailers that don’t accept mobile payments—yet. After years of predictions that mobile payments would replace cash and credit cards, there are finally signs that it might actually be happening. And Apple is leading the way.
Hardly New
The ability to pay for transactions with a mobile device is hardly new. In fact, the first technology for mobile payments was invented by Sony way back in 1989. It was first put into use in Hong Kong’s subway system in 1997 and began taking root in Japan in 2001. The tech-savvy Japanese warmed to the idea quickly, and mobile wallet apps were being used on mobile phones throughout Japan by 2004. Ever since, more than 245 million Japanese mobile phones have been equipped with the capability to make mobile payments, and Japanese consumers use mobile payments for everything from transportation to food and household purchases. So it seems odd that a similar system has not taken root in the United States, although it hasn’t been for lack of trying. Companies have been experimenting with different approaches for years. PayPal was the first to take advantage of the smart- phone revolution by creating a payment app that gave just about every smartphone the potential for mobile payments. About a year later, Google entered the mobile payment game with the launch of Google Wallet. In the past five years, numerous other companies, from small start-ups to electronics and retailing giants, have tried to gain market acceptance in mobile payments. They include the likes of Samsung, Square, and CurrentC, a mobile wallet app backed by a consortium of U.S. retailers (with Walmart leading the way) that hope to cut credit card companies and their fees out of the buying loop. But none of these players—individually or together—have made much of a dent in replacing traditional credit cards and cash as a form of payment in the multi-trillion-dollar U.S. retail market. Although the mobile payments concept may seem like a no-brainer for convenience-loving American consumers, numerous barriers on both the buyer and seller sides have kept the concept from gaining momentum. With its recent launch of Apple Pay, Apple is clearly a market follower. But it’s a feat that the innovative company has performed to perfection time and again—take a new technology, make it better than any of the initial offerings, then watch the market explode as the Apple version becomes the runaway market leader.
Overcoming Negative Consumer Perceptions
As with every new technology that involves paying for things, consumers have concerns about the security of mobile payments. PayPal, Google, and the others took significant measures to design secure systems. However, most consumers just weren’t comfortable with the idea that their phone might be used as a portal to their credit cards and bank accounts if it fell into the wrong hands. Never mind that the same could be said of a wallet or handbag, far less secure devices. Recognizing consumer reluctance to place digital versions of their financial devices in one app, Apple took security to a higher level. Requiring a fingerprint makes the process much more secure than the more common safeguard of entering a passcode. And if a mobile device is ever lost or stolen, the owner can use its Find My iPhone feature to immediately lock down Apple Pay or even wipe the device completely clean. Additionally, every compatible Apple device is assigned a unique Device Account Number. This is encrypted and securely stored in a dedicated security chip on the device. That and a transaction-specific security code are the only numbers that Apple transmits to merchants. In fact, the merchant doesn’t even need to know the customer’s name. Credit and debit card numbers are stored only on the local device, not on Apple servers. This makes Apple Pay even more secure and more private than paying by credit card. Beyond consumer security concerns, previous adoption of mobile payment apps has been slowed by perceptions of a clunky user experience. If convenience is the biggest draw for consumers, then anything more arduous than the already convenient swipe of a credit card simply won’t cut it. Setting up any of the existing mobile payment apps takes time and effort. Using such apps at the point of purchase is far from seamless, especially if the technology isn’t working quite right. “I don’t want to be that guy holding up the line while we fumble around to get it all to work,” says one business columnist, “just like I don’t want to be the guy who holds up the line boarding an air- plane because his mobile boarding pass can’t be read.” Mobile apps that hit the market prior to Apple Pay required entering a passcode and—in some cases—hitting multiple buttons. That took longer than the traditional swipe of the card, even if every- thing worked as intended. With Apple Pay, users still need to configure the app. But Apple already has 800 million credit cards on file with its existing iTunes store. Not only can this facilitate a set up that is already streamlined compared with existing apps, it’s a sign that iTunes users may be more comfortable with using the app given that they have already given their credit card information to Apple. And with the TouchID sensor, Apple has the transaction down to a one-touch process. That’s quicker than swiping a card and going through the typical menu, not to mention quicker than inputting a passcode. But thanks to Apple, that situation is changing rapidly. It may be because of Apple’s clout or because of the company’s massive and loyal user base. But in less than a year, Apple has signed up far more retailers than all the previous mobile payment providers combined. “You need so many points of accep- tance to make mobile payments work,” says a mobile payments analyst for Forrester Research. “Apple has made that happen, striking partnerships with top national brands across a variety of categories that will give consumers plenty of opportunity to use the service.” Apple has also signed up enough credit card issuing banks and credit unions to cover 83 percent of charge volume. In fact, Apple Pay has gained enough steam that Best Buy and Meijer will soon be accepting the payment app, despite having signed exclusivity agreements as part of the CurrentC consortium. But Apple still faces many challenges. For example, even though Apple Pay is now technically accepted at more than 700,000 U.S. retail outlets, many of those outlets don’t yet have the hardware installed that will recognize Apple’s app. That fact can be discouraging to early adopters, hurting repeat usage. One recent survey showed that 66 percent of iPhone 6 owners had signed up for Apple Pay, but nearly half of them had visited a store listed as an Apple Pay merchant only to find that the location wasn’t set up yet to process mobile payments through the app. Additionally, although Apple’s penetration of the market far exceeds that of the competition and continues to grow each month, the mobile payments leader has a long way to go before reaching critical mass with 8 million retail outlets. And this doesn’t even take into account online and in- app payments. Still, Apple remains confident. “We are more convinced than ever that 2015 will be the year of Apple Pay,” says Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. While there are still plenty of doubters that mobile payments will replace plastic as the go-to method for purchasing goods and services, there are also plenty of believers. And while Apple is clearly ahead in this game, its success also bodes well for the competition. As the concept catches on and technologies become more compatible, demand among non-Apple users will increase as well. There is no shortage of options in the mobile payments field. And improvements designed to make the apps more convenient are being made continually, including the integration of loyalty cards and other promotional mechanisms. But even as other companies’ offerings get better, expect Apple to be more competitive than ever. After all, nothing is stopping it from creating Apple Pay for Android devices.
Case Discussion format
• Brief Background
• Answer Questions for Discussion below
• Conclusion form the case
• Lessons learned from the analyzing this case
• Should be 2-3 pages’ long
Case Study Questions
1. As completely as possible, sketch the value delivery net- work for Apple Pay.
2. With respect to Apple Pay, is Apple a producer, a consumer, or an intermediary? Explain.
3. Identify all the reasons why Apple’s partnerships are essential to the success of Apple Pay.
4. With respect to marketing channels, what are some threats to Apple Pay’s future?

Additional Questions
7-3. What is a product line? Discuss the various product line decisions marketers make and how a company can expand its product line.

7-4. What is a product mix? Name and describe the four important dimensions of a product mix.

The purpose of this assignment is to read a novel from United States Literature prior to 1877 and then to
describe the historical context in which the novel was written.
1.
Choose a novel from the list below and read it.
2.
Research the historical context of the novel, paying attention to the author and his/her background and
community, the major events surrounding the writing of the novel, and the major issues or ideas in
America at the time of its publication.
3.
Compile of
bibliography of at least 5 sources, in addition to the novel itself
(6 total sources)
.
Use a
Bibliography,
not
a Works Cited.
4.
Write a research paper of approximately
1500 words
, conforming to the Historical style, describing the
historical context of the novel. The paper should include, but not be dominated by, a
brief plot summary
of the novel.
5.
The paper should be double spaced, in 12 point font with 1
”
margins. It should include page numbers,
but not subheadings. Do not use a cover page. Put your name and title on the top of the first page.
Citations are footnotes or endnotes,
not
parenthetical.
Historical writing requires the use of either the University of Chicago or Turabian style guide.

Your second essay will be an evaluation, a type of essay that seeks to influence or change a reader’s opinion about a subject by analyzing it on established criteria and asserting an overall judgement. For example: A product review seeks to influence a consumer’s decision to purchase a product.

Your task:
1) Choose a subject for your evaluation. Here are some ideas that you may choose from: a local restaurant, a food truck, a bar or cocktail lounge, a public figure, a professional athlete, a community/state/national leader (not necessarily a politician), a film, a video, a painting, a photograph, an advertisement, a travel destination, a park, a university, a zoo, a vehicle, or an airline. You may choose to review The Laramie Project, a play running at Delgado’s Timothy K. Baker Theater Sept. 20 – Oct. 7. Ultimately, you are free to evaluate any subject, but every student must discuss his/her topic with me before writing. Keep in mind: your reader may be unfamiliar with your subject; they may already have an opinion on it; their opinion might vastly differ from yours. Consider these possibilities early on in the process.
2) Next, break down your subject into its most important criteria. For example: Criteria for evaluating a music video might include visuals, music, lyrics, choreography, special effects, editing, themes, or narrative.
3) Analyze the subject’s value in each criterion. Use examples to support your analysis. Sample scenario: I am evaluating a science fiction novel. I decide to evaluate the novel based on the criteria of language, character, plot, and genre. First, I assess the author’s use of language: the author’s description of the world is vivid but meandering. I then use two or three examples from the novel to support this statement. Next, I examine character: the novel’s heroine is complex and realistic, but her speech rings false. I proceed to support this estimation with more examples. Third, I appraise the plot: full of surprising twists and turns but disconnected at certain important junctures. Again, I use examples from the novel to back up my analysis. Finally, I consider the novel’s genre: Although it is marketed as hard science fiction, I identify several archetypal devices of the classic mystery novel to be skillfully integrated. At last, I support my final observation with more examples taken directly from the subject.
4) Synthesize your analysis into an overall judgment. You will assert this judgement (or main idea) in your thesis statement. Is your subject effective/ineffective? Successful/unsuccessful? Overrated/underrated? Worthwhile/not worthwhile? To continue my sample scenario from above: Adding up all my thoughts about the novel under various criteria, I assert that overall, the novel is deftly written with an artful hand, save for the few rookie mistakes of a young writer. Remember your audience; your judgement may depend on what your reader values most. If your audience most likely agrees with your judgment already, then you should choose a different topic.
5) Step into your readers’ shoes and respond to some objections they may raise about your judgement or analysis. For example: Another reader of this novel might find its cyborg crimelord antagonist to be flat or one-dimensional. I acknowledge this objection and counterargue that the author intended this effect for the antagonist in order to contrast the protagonist’s complexity, thematically reflecting that she is the only organic being in a society of machines.
6) You must organize your evaluation into a clear, logical structure with smooth transitions and a progressive arrangement of ideas.

Instructions:
• This assignment will be a paper that demonstrates your ability to conduct an observational study using both qualitative and quantitative methods.
• This assignment will examine your knowledge of the methods used in systematic observations, including observing and recording certain behaviors and analyzing both qualitative and quantitative observational data.
• Students will turn in INDIVIDUAL papers based on group-work. Group work will be used to develop observational protocols, collect data, and analyze data but the write-up will be done INDIVIDUALLY.
• The paper will be 6 pages in length in the format of a APA-style research paper. The body of the paper will include an introduction, a methods section, a results section, and a conclusion. If applicable, a copy of the protocols used to collect data can be shown in the appendix section of the paper.
• To receive full credit, the paper must have the following sections and must include the following components
o Introduction
 Problem under study
 Literature Review
• Must have at least two references
 Rationale and hypothesis of the study
o Method
 Participants/Sample
 Measures
 Procedure/Analysis Strategy
o Results
 Must include at least 1 table or figure presenting descriptive statistics
o Discussion
 Limitations
o References
• All sections of the paper must be written in sentence format. Additional information regarding these sections can be referred to in class slides, the textbook, or other academic research papers.
• Tables/figures and appendices (if applicable) should be on separate pages following the references