QUESTION - Since the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, the most affected industry is automobile. Yamada Co. recently suffered its fourth straight decline in quarterly earnings - despite a modest increase in sales. Unfortunately, auto industry is highly competitive, so the company is reluctant to increase its price. However, management believes that profits would improve if the efforts of its sales force were redirected that its core competencies were strategy, design, and marketing and that production should be outsourced. Consequently, Yamada subcontracts all its production.

Yamada's salespersons are paid salaries and commissions. All of the company's salespersons sell the company's full line of products. The commissions are 5% of the revenue generated by a salesperson and average about 60% of a salesperson's total compensation. There has been some discussion of increasing the size of the sales force, but management would rather redirect the efforts of salespersons towards the more profitable products. While management is reluctant to tinker with the sales compensation scheme, revenue targets for the various products will be set for the regional sales managers based on the products that management wants to push most aggressively. The regional sales managers will be paid a bonus if the sales targets are met.

The company computes product margins for all its products using the following formula:

Selling price

Less: sales commissions

Less: cost of sales

Less: operating expenses

 = Product margin

The cost of sales in the product margin formula is the amount Yamada pays to its production subcontractors. The operating expenses represent fixed cost. Each product is charged a fair share of those costs, calculated these year are 34.6% of the product's selling price. Management is convinced that the best way to improve overall profits is to redirect the efforts of the company's salespersons. There are no plans to add or drop any products.

Required: How would you measure the relative profitability of the company's products in the situation? Assume that it is not feasible to change the way salespersons are compensated. Also assume that the only data you have available are the selling price, the sales commissions, the cost of sales, the operating expenses, and the product margin for each product.