Upgrading Meineke’s Car Care Shop in Queens County, New York

Report assignment:
REPORT 1: FIRST HIGH-STAKES ASSIGNMENT
You are required to prepare a report for your employer to explain the strengths and weaknesses of opening a new branch of the business. You will present the report to members of the board of directors. Your main task will be to convince board members to fund the new branch, and, if you succeed, you will become the manager of the new branch. The purpose of this high-stakes assignment will be for students to show that they understand how to apply in decision making five concepts of scarcity, choice, opportunity costs, rational behavior, and marginal analysis.
REQUIREMENTS:
The report should have a maximum of 4-5 pages, adopt double-spaced page margin and use Ariel Font 12.
Outline for Report 1

(1) In the top of Page 1, you will be required to show the title of the report.

(2) Introduction section (half to one page):
Below the title, two spaces below the title, write “Introduction” or just start writing to tell us about the business you selected, including name, ownership structure, if you work/worked there, and location. After that, discuss the current situation in the sector/industry in which the business you will write about is located. Here, we want you to tell us, for example, if you select a restaurant, what is the current situation in the restaurant industry in the country, state or city.

(3) Body of the report (three or four pages):
Discuss reasons that you want to create a new branch. Specifically, tell us three examples each of opportunities, weaknesses, and potentials for creating the new branch. Thereafter, adopt five concepts of scarcity, choice, opportunity costs, rational behavior, and marginal analysis to explain to the board why you think that failure to open the new branch may be a bad business decision. When discussing the 5 concepts, for scarcity, you provide some amounts of dollars that you think may be needed to open the new branch. That is, tell the owners the estimated amounts that it may take to open the new branch, specifying how much rent, equipment, wages may cost. Once you set the amount of dollars (think four categories of scarce resources) it helps you to discuss choice; so, you define choice, and then tell owners the alternative uses of the scarce resources that you seek. Tell them at least 3 alternative uses (your proposal and two others) of the dollars, to show that you understand that owners have other competing uses of the funds that you seek. After that, you discuss opportunity cost by defining it, first, and identifying the second next best alternative uses of the resources you seek (this should be one of the alternatives under choice, other than your proposal). Next, you discuss rational behavior by defining it and then telling owners why the concept is the logical basis for them to determine whether your proposal or the second alternative is better. Lastly, discuss marginalism by first defining it and then using the reasoning behind the concept to show why your proposal makes a better business sense.

(4) Summary section (half to one page):
Write a summary of the report based on the information on Sections 2 and 3, above.

-These are the instruction for my report. I wrote my report already but my professor says that I need to review and fix it. Please make sure to read carefully the instructions tons and the outline. Following these instructions and outline please check, review, fix, add, erase or do anything to fix my paper. I just need to fix my paper and fulfill all the requirements. Basically, I want you to revise my paper based on my professor’s remarks and assignment instructions. Below are my professor’s comments on my paper, please read them and use his comments to fix my paper.

Professor’s comment:
REMARKS:

Introduction: This is generally fine. But the report should have a maximum of 5 pages, so you may have to summarize the intro while retaining key pieces of information as required in the guideline.

Body:
Opportunity:
The 3 opportunities you gave are unclear. So clearly tell us what the 3 opportunities are. Opportunity has to do with why society/customers need the company’s products. In other words, what 3 opportunities exist that the company wants to take advantage of by offering its products?

Weaknesses:
Clearly tell us 3 weaknesses that may arise if the branch is established.

Potentials:
Tell us 3 potentials that may arise if the branch is established.

On the 5 concepts, you should first define each concept before applying it to your case. Still, I think that you did well with the way you apply the concepts, except for scarcity. Tell us how much it may take to open the new branch, and then break down the amount into the 4 categories of scarce resources; that is, once you know the total amount to establish the business, how much of the amount goes to rent (land), wages (labor or employees), equipment and software (capital), and managerial and owners remuneration (entrepreneurship). The point here is to understand that scarce resources at the disposal of a business ultimately get distributed among the 4 categories of resources.
Summary: See the guideline on preparing the report for the information that you should provide in the Summary section. You may use this also as a guide: