31 July 2008 
Accounting Quiz
Quiz for Using Accounting Information, Chapter 18
A. Accounting
B. Assets
C. Balance Sheet
D. Current Ratio
E. Liabilities
F. Liquidity
G. Notes payable
H. Owner’s Equity
I. Public Accountant
J. Statement of Cash Flows
1) It is the process of collecting, analyzing and reporting data.
A. Accounting
2) All the firm’s debts are included.
E. Liabilities
3) It is the difference between a firm’s assets and its liabilities.
H. Owner’s Equity
4) A person employed by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
I. Public Accountant
5) Inventories are an example.
B. Assets
6) The ease with which assets can be converted into cash.
F. Liquidity
7) The statement reveals the financial position of the firm.
C. Balance Sheet
It illustrates how operating, investing and financing activities affect cash.
J. Statement of Cash Flows
9) A promissory note secures this obligation.
G. Notes payable
10) The result of dividing current assets by current liabilities.
D. Current Ratio
11) Who are the primary users of accounting information?
Managers
12) The accounting process is based on the accounting equation:
Assets = liabilities + owner’s equity.
13) What is a Balance Sheet?
A balance sheet is a summary of a firm’s assets, liabilities, and owner’s equity.
14) What is an Income Statement?
An income statement is a summary of a firm’s financial operations during the specified accounting period.
15) What is a Statement of Cash Flows?
This statement illustrates how the operating, investing and financing activities of a company affect cash during an accounting period.
Current Event Presentation Helps
Current Event/Internet Assignment: Each student will be required to give a brief oral presentation on a current newspaper article, found on the Internet.
The Current Event Presentation is 10 percent of the student’s grade. There are 12 points that make up the 10 percent. The presentation should be 7 to 10 minutes long.
This presentation should be organized:
1) Provide the source of the article. This is where you found the article. Most newspapers have an on-line website with content.
2) Deliver a brief overview of the topic,
and, most important,
3) Your opinion/reaction to the article.
At the conclusion of the presentation you will turn in a print out of the article, being sure to include the newspaper source, date, and Website.
Current Event grading scale:
12 Total Points
1 — Choice of article
2 — Follow Directions
2 — Organization
3 — Overview/Reaction/Opinion
3 — Presentation
See
Persuasion: Five Points To Improve Your Voice Communication
Seven Rules For MicroPhone Management
Practice Before Friendly Friends, Like Lily Tomlin
Look Behind, See The Light Pole Growing Out of My Head.
How to Handle a Hostile Interviewer
10 Tips for Your Big Show Biz Break
Public Speaking and “Stuck on Stupid”
If there are options, you may not want to do a media appearance.
Tricks for the Media Interviewer
The First Question To Ask When a Reporter Calls
1 — Turn In: As is common in the medical community, If it is not charted, it didn’t happen. Turn in all materials, notes and eyewash. The thicker the file, the higher the grade.
12 Total Points
Accounting, Finance, Money, Banking and Credit
Chapters 18 and 19
Following are links to PowerPoint presentations on Accounting and Finance, Money, Banking and Credit.
The ‘crs’ slides are the PowerPoints on short tests.
Using Accounting Information
Understanding Money, Banking and Credit
25 July 2008
Advertising: The Good and The Bad
A common question from my business students is “Why are some ads so bad?”
It does seem counter-intuitive. Why would marketing managers (Budget? What budget?) spent millions for what seems to be a bad impression. Or simply to shock.
At times marketers will deliberately make an awful advertisement to make it memorable. So that a consumer walking down a grocery store aisle will remember a product. But sometimes marketers have gone too far.
So Your Business Blogger(R) has assembled two sets of ads: Good and Bad.
Let’s start with the good. The motto in my business is Delectare et Docere, To Please and To Instruct.
The first set of ads is To Please and To Remind. The Georgia-Pacific paper company did a series of Brawny Man ads a few years ago, still alive on YouTube. A bit longer at some 120 seconds on the web which is a destination that viewers tune in and view with a purpose. Which is to please. Even a novice will notice that the target market is women. Alert Readers will notice the early ‘product placement’ in the ad.
There’s lot’s more Brawny Man — but let us begin our descent from good to bad.
Some marketers have crossed over to the dark side with dark ads. Ancient Jewish tradition commands the faithful to imagine no evil. “As a man thinks in his heart, so he is.” And “Guard your heart, it is the wellspring of life.”
It is a sound philosophy to permit only good inside your circle of friends, your house, your head. Imagine world peace, as the new-agers would say.
But some ad messages put darkness on display.
Charmaine recently appeared on Fox to debate shock advertising. (Your Business Blogger(R) married way over his head…)
Charmaine on an earlier FOX appearance Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D., appeared on Fox News on March 1, 2008 to debate the issue of edgy ads and to discuss the prevalence of shock-style advertising in the media.
At the time she was a Vice President of Family Research Council, she now runs a boutique law firm. She debated Greg Muehler from Serve Marketing who produced some of the shock ads.
FOX, fair and balanced is a family network and showed only those mildest of ads — Steve McQueen’s Bullet had more violent car chase scenes. Or The French Connection. The examples are not too bad.
But bad is coming at the end of this post.
###
Thank you (foot)notes:
Has advertising crossed the line? Shock ads linked below.
Caution: Might be safe for work — but not for kids.
From Newsweek, This Is Your Brain on Scary Ads — Are these graphic PSAs inspiring or offensive? You decide.,
The image is meant to shock: a little girl’s face atop a woman’s body, cleavage spilling over a low-cut cocktail dress. …The ads are disturbing, to put it mildly. But more disturbing, its creators say, is what they’re trying to combat: 71 percent of teen pregnancies in inner-city Milwaukee are the result of statutory rape. … But industry experts say the campaign represents a genre of public-service advertising that’s becoming more lurid than ever.
Shock advertising is an age-old gimmick. But compared with milder fare from years past (”This is your brain on drugs”), today’s imagery is “like a sledgehammer to the face,” says Steve Hall, founder of the industry blog AdRants. For instance: the ad displayed above-an anti-drunk-driving spot for Arrive Alive-featuring a scantily clad girl collapsed in a men’s bathroom. Experts have called it muddled and pointlessly provocative.
Alert Reader Kalynne Pudner, at Auburn University and teaches Biz Ethics, points us to this analysis by By Jeffrey A. Tucker at Mises, as in Ludwig von,
But why must it be tacky and unbearable to so many of us? Well, let’s be blunt: business is trying to reach the masses. Mises explains:
“Business propaganda must be obtrusive and blatant. It is its aim to attract the attention of slow people, to rouse latent wishes, to entice men to substitute innovation for inert clinging to traditional routine. In order to succeed, advertising must be adjusted to the mentality of the people courted. It must suit their tastes and speak their idiom. Advertising is shrill, noisy, coarse, puffing, because the public does not react to dignified allusions. It is the bad taste of the public that forces the advertisers to display bad taste in their publicity campaigns. The art of advertising has evolved into a branch of applied psychology, a sister discipline of pedagogy. Like all things designed to suit the taste of the masses, advertising is repellent to people of delicate feeling.”
A sister discipline of pedagogy? Yes indeed it is, and it is also art, and those with “delicate feeling” need to learn to appreciate it for what it is. They don’t have to believe a word of it. Decline to drink the potion to make you thin. Refuse the breakfast that will make you concentrate. Eschew the hand cream that will restore moisture. Be as skeptical as you want and, instead, save every penny. Turn off the television if you hate it and sit in your perfect environment and listen to Gregorian chant.
Newsweek continues,
Still, deterrence by disgust can work. In 2006, a series of Volkswagen safety ads drew attention for showing its cars in heart-stopping traffic accidents; within weeks, sales inquiries were up. A more recent ad for Canadian workplace safety features a glowing young chef describing her fiancé, whom she’ll never marry, she says, because she’s about to be in a “terrible accident.” She then slips and scorches her face with a cauldron of boiling water. … “Some small amount of discomfort is worth it if it creates positive change,” says Gary Mueller, founder of Serve, the agency behind the statutory-rape ads. The small discomfort, though, is getting bigger.
Danger: gallery of shock ads on Newsweek.
See: Reality, Marketing and Aristotle. Your Business Blogger and Charmaine were extras background artists in a movie. But The Dude was the star. And gave us a lesson in marketing.
Ludwig von Mises. Mises is pronounced “MEE-zus.” Charmaine told me.
Kalynne Pudner earned her Ph.D. at the University of Virginia. Auburn was lucky to get her.
For more on the ads click here.
Please watch the video and let us know what you think or comment below.
Practice Test #3 Marketing: 13, 14, 15, 16
This is the practice test for Marketing Chapters 13 to 16. Click here:
Following is an example of one of the scenarios:
Caroline’s Crafts ‘N Things
Sara works for a retail shop called Caroline’s Crafts ‘N Things. Sara was often quite rude to customers when they annoyed her. One morning, her supervisor asked Sarah into her office and informed her that her behavior was unacceptable. To be rude to one customer could cause several customers not to come back. Sarah’s supervisor told her that retaining a customer is much cheaper than trying to get a new one. After their constructive discussion, Sarah’s boss told her that she wanted her to go out on the floor that day and attempt to be more helpful to customers.
Over the next few months, Sarah began to help customers learn more about the different products in the store and often explained why the customer might want to purchase one product over another. In doing so, she realized the importance of her role in the retail shop and began to truly enjoy her job. She started to think about the future of the company. She even thought that the company could do very well if it were to sell its products on eBay. When she brought this idea to her boss, her boss thought it was excellent, and asked Sarah to look further into the pros and cons of her idea.
After evaluating Sara’s research, her manager decided to move forward with the idea, asking Sarah to head up this new venture for the company. Sarah then realized that retail is not just about making the sale; the customer should be the focus of all operations. Sarah now looks up to her boss, and is very glad that she was there to mentor her.
And,
Would personal income, disposable income, or discretionary income be of the greatest interest to marketers? Explain your answer.
23 July 2008
Marketing: Elements, Brand, Distribution, Promotion
Marketing Quiz
July 23, 2008 Name ______________________
1. What are the four elements of marketing? CHAPTER 13, page 411
P PRODUCT
P PRICE
D DISTRIBUTION
P PROMOTION
2. What is a brand? Chapter 14, Page 452
Any name, term, symbol, design, or any combination of these that identifies a seller’s products as distinct from those of other sellers
3. What is a marketing channel? Chapter 15, page 481
A channel of distribution; a sequence of marketing organizations that directs a product for the producer to the ultimate user. Every marketing channel begins with the producer and ends with either the consumer or the business user.
4. What is a marketing promotion? Chapter 16, 515
A communication about an organization and its products that is intended to inform, persuade, or remind target-market members.
21 July 2008
Building Customer Relations Through Effective Marketing
13, 14, 15 and 16 for Test Number Three
Building Customer Relations Through Effective Marketing
Creating and Pricing Products that Satisfy Customers
Wholesaling, Retailing, and Physical Distribution
Developing Integrated Marketing Communications
14 July 2008
Practice Test # 2, Business 100
Following link contains a brief practice test — the test review does not contain questions from all chapters. This practice test is designed to provide the Alert Student with a level of exposure to the difficulty of actual test questions.
Chapters 7, 8, 10, 11, 12; Test #2
Following are the study helps for Test Number 2, Business 100.
Secret code revealed here:
PPT is the slide presentation for each chapter.
CRS is the powerpoint quiz for each chapter.
Understanding the Management Process
Creating a Flexible Organization
Attracting and Retaining the Best Employees
Motivating and Satisfying Employees and Teams
Enhancing Union-Management Relations
7 July 2008
Practice Test #1
Practice test for Business 100, Test #1, Chapters 1 to 3, 5 & 6.