The new marketing and sales team will be responsible for managing each brand on an ongoing basis. How is this organizational team structure the best choice for brand management? Select an option from the choices below and click Submit. Brand management is already a key responsibility of your marketing and sales team. A consolidated marketing and sales team will allow individuals to organize activities around processes, such as brand management, and to use the resources of the entire organization rather than just the resources of their previous SBUs. Brand management may fall by the wayside at first given the overwhelming level of responsibility that each marketing and sales team member now has for multiple SBUs. The new department may resist the changes, but should eventually take hold of brand management as part of the job. With the continued competitiveness of the marketing and sales teams, you may have to push the group to take on brand management responsibilities given the fact that they are overloaded with multiple SBUs now. Brand management will inevitably suffer due to the vertical boundaries that still exist between marketing and sales.

Blue computers, a major pc manufacturer in the united states, currently has plants in kentucky and pennsylvania. the kentucky plant has a capacity of 1 million units a year and the pennsylvania plant has a capacity of 1.5 million units a year. the firm divides the united states into five markets: northeast, southeast, midwest, south, and west. each pc sells for $1,000. the firm anticipates a 50 perc~nt growth in demand (in each region) this year (after which demand will stabilize) and wants to build a plant with a capacity of 1.5 million units per year to accommodate the growth. potential sites being considered are in north carolina and california. currently the firm pays federal, state, and local taxes on the income from each plant. federal taxes are 20 percent of income, and all state and local taxes are 7 percent of income in each state. north carolina has offered to reduce taxes for the next 10 years from 7 percent to 2 percent. blue computers would like to take the tax break into consideration when planning its network. consider income over the next 10 years in your analysis. assume that all costs remain unchanged over the 10 years. use a discount factor of 0.1 for your analysis. annual fixed costs, production and shipping costs per unit, and current regional demand (before the 50 percent growth) are shown in table 5-13. (a) if blue computers sets an objective of minimizing total fixed and variable costs, where should they build the new plant? how should the network be structured? (b) if blue computers sets an objective of maximizing after-tax profits, where should they build the new plant? how should the network be structured? variable production and shipping cost ($/unit) annual fixed cost northeast southeast midwest south west (million$) kentucky 185 180 175 175 200 150 pennsylvania 170 190 180 200 220 200 n. carolina 180 180 185 185 215 150 california 220 220 195 195 175 150 demand ('000 units/month) 700 400 400 300 600