Alexander and Britney are the semi-retired co-owners of the bookshop, and do not take a salary. Cheryl, however, is a part-time employee, with total employment costs of $22 per hour. Cheryl is also entitled to four weeks of paid annual leave, during which a casual replacement is required at a cost of $33 per hour. Fixed costs such as rent and insurance are $2900 per year, and utilities costs are $140 per month.

Throughout the day, customers come to Fiction Zombie to buy books, and occasionally to sell them. When people bring in books to sell to Fiction Zombie, the staff member on duty will review the books and make an offer for each one individually. Currently, the process for determining how much the book shop will pay for a book is entirely subjective. Staff members offer an amount per book based on the quality of the book, and how popular they think it is, and how they are feeling at the time. The sale amount is always simply double the amount paid and is set at the same time – if Fiction Zombie pays $3.00 for a book, they will put it on sale with a marked price of $6.00.

Alexander and Britney want to improve the consistency of how they pay for and price books. They’d like to standardize on three standard price offers, and have designed the following process to determine how to allocate them, including the option of rejecting the book altogether.

Alexander and Britney want to improve the consistency of how they pay for and price books. They’d like to standardize on three standard price offers, and have designed the following process to determine how to allocate them, including the option of rejecting the book altogether.

The staff have already agreed on how to determine whether a book is terrible, poor, or good.

 

Answers:

Task 1

Fiction Zombie is a second hand book shop run by thre staff members eAlexander, Britney and Cheryl. Alexander and Britney are co-owners of this second bookshop so they don’t drew any salaries. Cheryl is the third staff member of this shop and works at a cost of $22 per hour.  Cheryl is entitled to four weeks of annual paid leaves, during which casual replacement is required at the cost of $33 per hour. Alexander and Britney both work three-three days in a week for three and half hours every day and Cheryl works Monday to Friday everyday for 3 hours. A projected annual cost to the Fiction Zombie is $22400 including $2900 as fixed costs and $140 as utility costs. 

Task 2

• This graph visualizes how the salary is paid to the all the staff members annually. Alexander and Britney don’t take salaries but they work for 3.3 hours every day till Saturday. So, there data point is at 0. Cheryl is the only one who takes salary so its data point is at 22 i.e. one hour rate and total wage of the year is $15840. Casual replacement is also included for fulfil the leaves of Cheryl. Replacement costs $33 per hour and for four weeks it is calculated as $1980.

• Second graph shows the change in prices of books over time. In Fiction Zombie shop people come to purchase and sell the books. When people come to sell books staff members review the condition of book and then they offer the price for it individually. The sale amount is always doubled. In this graph, four months of tracking is done on how the amount of book is changed over four months. According to the quality of books i.e. terrible, poor and good quality the price of the book is decided including the newness and publication date. According to the history of prices offered to the seller the prices of terrible books increases in July and august but gradually decreases in September. Poor quality books with recent publication date have nominal offer rate. Good quality books rates are increased in a couple of months. 

TASK 3

Fiction Zombie sells and purchase books in a specified manner. From reviewing the quality of books to offering a price of a book, all things are gone through a specified process. To hold the consistency of price pay for book, the co-owners designed a process on how to allocate the prices including the option of rejecting the book altogether. Firstly, when the customer comes to sell his books, it is gone through quality check, if its condition is terrible the book is rejected. If the book is in poor condition and older than 15 years it goes into a low price tag. And when the book is of good quality its publication date is seen, if its publication year is less than 15 years or newer then hardcover is checked and customer is offered high value price otherwise medium value price is offered. All comes to an end with again evaluating the quality and tags.

Based on the history of prices, quality and condition of books the automated process is created. Terrible condition books are directly rejected. Poor quality books are offered low prices. Good quality books with hardcover with publication year less than 15 years is offered high price while good quality books with paperback are offered medium prices. If employee put values of publication year, quality and type of cover into the cells they will get the desired result.

TASK 4

  

• For several months, staff has been keeping track of the date and time, quality, publication year and amount paid for each book in a spreadsheet. With the help of historical data, scenario one is created. It tells about the total offer prices which are approximately equal to the historical data. Assuming that low price is less than medium price and both prices less than high price the bar graph is created. Graph shows the value of prices according to their quality and condition for four different months. In this, offer prices and original prices are compared to determine the sets of prices which comply with the given condition. Prices have been decided according to the publication year and the condition of book, recent publication year with good condition is offered a High price and late publication year with terrible condition is listed under low price tag.
• This scenario visualizes that Alexander and Britney receives the same wage as Cheryl. It will have effect on projected annual costs. This annual costs will increase as the wages are increased. This scenario also tells about assumption of purchase of all books.