Question

The marketing manager of a food products company is attempting to decide whether they should introduce a new line of salad dressings. The company can test market the salad dressings in selected geographic areas or bypass the test market and introduce the product nationally. The cost of the test market is $135,000. If the company conducts the test market, it must wait to see the results before deciding whether to introduce the salad dressings nationally. The probability of a positive test market result is estimated to be 0.6. Alternatively, the company can decide not to conduct the test market and go ahead and make the decision to introduce the dressings or not. If the salad dressings are introduced nationally and are a success, the company estimates that it will realize an annual profit of $1,500,000 while if the dressings fail it will incur a loss of $600,000. The company believes the probability of success for the salad dressings is 0.50 if they are introduced without the test market. If the company does conduct the test market and it is positive, then the probability of successfully introducing the salad dressings increases to 0.7. If the test market is negative and the company introduces the salad dressings anyway, the probability of success drops to 0.30.

1. Draw a complete decision tree for this problem. Clearly present all decision and event nodes, probabilities, and payoffs.
2. What should the management do to achieve the highest expected payoff?

Answer 1

a)

Decision tree

b)

Alternative : Test market

expected value at node 4 = 0.7*15*10^5+0.3*(-6*10^5) = 870000

expected value at node 5 = 0.3*15*10^5+0.7*(-6*10^5) = 30000

expected value at node 2 = 0.6*870000+0.4*30000 = 534000

Total expected payoff for this alternative = 534000-135000 = 399000

Alternative : No Test market

expected value at node 3 = 0.5*15*10^5+0.5*(-6*10^5) = 450000

So Management should not do test market and without doing test market should launch it nationally