“The Situation”

Rogers Watersis a Broadband service provider serving 60% of Ontario’s retail broadband customers. Rogers has hired you — a consultant at the BCG (Bad Consulting Group) — to advise them on the following two mutually exclusive internal proposals:

•    Internal Proposal #1: Rogers’ Marketing team wants to increase the monthly retail price by $0.80. The Business-Analytics group has pointed out that raising the cost of broadband services will make Rogers’ customers “worse off ” and induce customers to switch/defect to “Bell”. The company wants you to analyze this proposal and recommend a strategy, if possible, whereby the company can raise prices and retain customers.

•    Internal Proposal #2: Rogers’ Business-Analytics group wants to improve broadband services. The Marketing team has

pointed out that improving service will certainly make customers “better off ” but without the company “getting anything  back in return” (after all, Rogers is a profit seeking company, not a charity). The company wants you to analyze this proposal and recommend a strategy, if possible, whereby the company can improve its service and make more money.

The CEO of Rogers has engaged you to investigate these two mutually exclusive proposals and write a business-report with your analysis and recommendations. The business-report must have a title page with your full name, student ID number, and — of course —  the Bad Consulting Group logo. The report must at most three page (excluding the title page) and written in “simple, plain, direct” English free of “technical/micro/math/jargon” (that’s why you need to attend the TUT sessions on Wednesday, October 15th). The “format” (font, margin etc.) is up to you.

To reiterate: the title page plus max three pages report must not contain econ-jargon/math/formulas (of course, you can use graphs and tables). That said, you must show your “econ-analysis” in an appendix of (practically) unlimited length [no restrictions on math, econ-jargon, etc.]. The point of the appendix is to show the solution as you would on a test; the point of the paper is to explain your arguments and provide recommendations to someone who is well-read/intelligent/analytical (think of the Doctor in your family) but who has never taken an econ course (I mean, would you? That was a joke by the way). This project is 5% of your course grade; we will deduct 1% of your course grade if you use formulas, math, jargon (ex: MRS) in the main business-report.

You have already analyzed a similar problem as Project 1 in a TUT. To jolt your memory, recall the following utility model of the average broadband consumers’ preferences over cost and eight attributes of broadband service:

U = 一0.021C + 0.945FS + 1.009VFS + 0.417R + 0.134P + 0.092TH +  0.00001ML + 0.106VF  + 0.069MR

Where: