Assignment

For this first SLP, discuss your business idea and do some initial research on what prices your potential competitors in your home town are charging. More specifically, write a three-page paper discussing the following issues:

1. What business do you want to start, and why? Explain your personal connection to this type of business and discuss sources of information about this business that you plan to use for your SLP.

2. What prices are these businesses in your chosen industry charging? Try to get at least ten examples of businesses and the prices they are charging, and create a table that lists the prices and any other relevant information, such as whether the product they sell is high-end quality or lower-end quality.

3. Do you notice a large range of prices that businesses are charging for the service or product? If so, what factors do you think explain the range of prices? Is it the quality of the product or service, location of the business, amount of advertising done by each business, other?

Based on your answers to Questions 1 and 2 above, do you think your product or service will have elastic or inelastic demand? You don't have to do any calculations since you probably won't have access to sales data on the businesses you are looking at - but based on the range of prices, you should be able to get an idea about how sensitive consumers of your product or service will be to changes in price. In addition to your own research about prices in your home town, cite some of the required background reading on elasticity to justify your answer.

Reference your sources of information with both a bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 11- 14 on in-text citations. Another resource is the "Writing Style Guide," which is found under "My Resources" in the TLC Portal.