Company and Industry Research Assignment Assignment Goal: The purpose of this assignment is to showcase your ability to explain a deeper understanding of a market around you, and a specific company participating within that market, by using concepts from Unit Two - Costs of Production and Market Structure (Pure Competition, Pure Monopoly, Monopolistic Competition, and Oligopoly) chapters. ---------Included in this analysis are three components: 1. Research a firm using websites suggested below, and others of your choice, to determine the likely market structure of the industry in which the firm participates and to identify the supporting characteristics which help you determine this market structure. 2. Identify a change to the market and/or firm and state the likely impact on the firm's demand and/or cost curves. If it impacts the cost curves, identify if it is a change to fixed or variable costs, and state the impact on total costs. (This may be reflected through either total or average costs.) Be sure to state the appropriate determinants causing any changes as outlined in the Unit Two chapters. (You can use concepts of supply and demand, elasticity, etc. to supplement your proof of ability to use economic concepts too!) 3. Create general (no specific numbers needed) graphs depicting the firm's situation before and after the situation identified in point #2 using the MC, ATC, and AVC cost curves along with the appropriate demand and MR curves given the market structure. 4. Include the works cited from your research. ---------Your analysis is to be presented to the class as a video of 5 minutes or less and uploaded to YouTube or completed at VoiceThread.com (details below) for review and grading. A visual of the presenter must be in the video a minimum of one time during the course of the presentation and an audio is required to prove authenticity of work. The link to your video is to be copied and pasted to the class discussion board within Canvas as indicated by your instructor. Points are awarded in the following categories: 1. Accuracy and completion of all points described above. (80% of assignment score) 2. Professionalism (this doesn't mean you can't use humor, just that the humor should make a learning point pertaining to the assignment!) This includes a picture or visual of the person completing the assignment.(10% of assignment score) 3. Visual of presenter(s), audio, and works cited included. (10% of assignment score.) This assignment is worth approximately 50% of your Unit Two Exam score. An example analysis can be found here (this company and industry is therefore excluded from student presentation options.): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46TLiaNOZtU Suggestions for company research: finance.yahoo.com www.googlefinance.com www.finviz.com www.fool.com www.bloomberg.com ...there are so many more! Google searching is fine too. Be sure to cite any website sources of information! Suggestions for video creation: If you've never created a YouTube style video – it's time to learn! A simple Google search will give you MANY choices for tutorials and ways to create videos and how to upload them to YouTube. Use whichever option works best for you, but below are a few suggestions: I use a program called SnagIt for my video creation – it has a free trial period and educational pricing if you want to keep using it for other classes, etc. The free trial site for SnagIt is here: https://signin.techsmith.com/?wa=wsignin1.0&wtrealm=https%3a%2f%2fwww.techsmith.com %2fsignin&wctx=rm%3d0%26id%3dpassive%26ru%3d%252fdownload%252fsnagit%252f %253f&redirect=/download/snagit/?&client_id=A17ACEA9-7680-4EBE-8E6516992B353E6C&trial=true The educational pricing site is here: http://shop.techsmith.com/store/techsm/en_US/pd/productID.289742700 Another option is the website VoiceThread where you can upload a PowerPoint (or other presentation, pictures, etc.), it records audio (and allows you to “draw” on the presentation as it records), and creates a video link to share with others (No upload to YouTube is required.) You'll need to set up a free account, but again, there are good instructions on this site for how to do everything. If you use this option, be sure to enable others to view it. The VoiceThread site is here: www.voicethread.com
