ITECH1100 Understanding The Digital Revolution

Task 1:  Cost of operating the business

Considering the operations of Fiction life, both Albert and Bernita work 2 and half hours a day for 3 days each, while Chris works 5 hours each day for 5 days in a week making a total of 25 hours each week. The total Annual wages for Chris sum up to $28,600, while the wages of the casual worker who stands in for Chris during his 4 week annual leave are $3,300. In addition, the total annual fixed costs are $2,900 whereas the annual utility costs are $1,680. Therefore the total outgoing costs for fiction life bookshop is $36, 480.

Task 2: Sales teams offers

How prices differed for each staff member

1. Price difference visualization for good condition books

On average, Albert offered approximately $7.5 as the highest price for books that were in relatively good condition. Consequently, he offered a flat price of $2 for good condition books. However from the sales distribution, it is noted that Albert offered relatively high prices for hard cover books compared to paperback books.

Chris, who made the most purchases of the three workers, gave a higher price offer for books that were in relatively good condition for as high as $9.5 which were mostly hardcover and a lowest price offer of $4.

Elsewhere concerning books in relatively good condition Bernita offered the highest price offer for hardcover books at an average of up to $11.5 as well as the lowest price for paperback books which averaged at $1.8

Price difference visualization for poor condition books

Albert gave the highest price for poor condition books at $ 3 compared to other staff members who offered relatively lower prices in that category. He offered $0.5 as the lowest offer for poor condition books.

Chris offered $2.5 as the highest price for poor condition books and $1 as the lowest price for books in this category.

Bernita offered the lowest high price for poor condition books i.e. $2 as well as the lowest offer price of $0.4

Price difference visualization for terrible condition books

In as much as Albert gave the highest offer of up to $1 for terrible condition books, he is the only staff member who rejected some of the books.

Chris offered an average of $0.2 for terrible condition books; he however gave $0.5 on four books in this category.

Bernita offered a flat price of $0.2 on all books that were in terrible condition.

Change of price offers over time

Averagely, Albert’s price offers have been showing a lessening trend mostly in a spiral form for books across all categories. The same trend is relatively true for Chris whose offer shows a diminishing trend for the various categories as well as Bernita’s. However Bernita and Chris’s offer for books in terrible condition is relatively constant over time.

Task 3: Automation

In automating the system, once a book is brought by a customer, the staff member available determines the condition of the book and notes in the spreadsheet. Such that the book is rejected if it is in terrible condition, if it is 15 years and older it is categorized under poor otherwise it is in good condition i.e. if it 15 years or less from the current date. If in a poor condition, the staff member makes an offer of a low price. If it is in a good condition and 15 years or less, the staff member will then determines and enters its type. If it is a paperback book type a medium offer is made for the book, if it is hard cover a high price is offered for the book.

Task 4: Price setting

Scenario 1

The total historical offer price is $1262. In order to set the price such that the total price is approximately the same as the historical price:

1. Determine the total number of books in both good and poor condition. There are a total of 165 books in good condition while 159 are in poor condition.
2. Categorize the books in good condition into paperback and hard cover

• Hard cover- 89 books
• Paperback- 76 books
• Set the prices such that Hardcover books take the highest price, while paperback take medium price and books in poor condition take low price

1. Allocate hypothetical prices to either two categories and multiply to determine which prices have a total approximate to the historical offer price. In my case:

• High offer price- $7.5
• Medium offer price- $4.5
• Low offer price- $1.7

Multiplying with the number of books in each category and summing up, it totals to $1263.9 which is approximately equal to $1262.

Scenario 2

In the historical data, Chris works a five hour day for 60 days, the wage is $22/hr. Therefore Chris is entitled to $6600. As such, the other two employees are also entitled to $6600 each. The total wages are thus $19800.

1. Divide the total wages with the total offer price in the historical data to obtain the ratio

• Ratio is 1:15.68

1. Multiply each offer price by the ratio to obtain the suggested sales price for each book in the historical data

Task five

The python codes for reimplementation of tasks 1 and 2 follow the same structure as in the excel files, i.e. the formulas are defined in the python syntax using the pandas and xlwt libraries. Upon running the code, they generate the same results as in respective excel files except there are no formulas in the output.