Saving the Manatees - Case Study Example

?Presented by Saving the Manatees Case Study Introduction Tom came up with a plan to save the manatees, large gray-brown aquatic mammals with taper flat bodies. Since the animals are found in shallow slow-moving rivers, canals, estuaries and coastal areas many get killed by running motor boats. Tom introduced a bill to the Florida legislature aimed at restricting the use of motor boats in manatees’ inhabited areas. Tom organization supported the bill before Florida legislature and required votes from people across the country to help pass the bill. Moreover, Tom had to look for sponsors to fund the advertising and campaigning costs. The national environmental protection agency donated 300,000 United States dollars to assist in creating public awareness about the bill and urge more people to vote for it (Ragsdale 137-138). A linear programming (LP) spreadsheet model would play a significant role in designing how to allocate the provided funds to different advertising agents. The spreadsheet model assists in determining the total impact of using various advertising agents, the total constraints, and the optimal solution. Description of the data The data from the spreadsheet consists of 3 columns. The first column C shows the cost per unit of the advertising medium used in U.S. dollars. The following data represents the objective variables. The objective variables work in maximizing or minimizing numerical values. The value presented on the objective cell is the expected net budget value of the project. The product of C and decision units I give the total cost of advertisement. The second set of data is represented by E showing per unit impact rate. This column represents the constraints. Constraints define any possible variable that a linear programming problem takes. In the data E provided, constraints represent percentage impact of using a certain medium for advertising. The next data is represented by G showing the minimum value of decisions made with the smallest advertising medium. On the other hand, column K presents data of the maximum decision a product of using large advertising mediums. Discuss the results After constructing the spreadsheet and doing calculations, the following results were arrived at. What is the optimal solution? The total impact rate was $23,515. The values for impact rate were arrived at by multiplying E with I. The total impact rate was used to calculate the optimal solution in order to decide which advertising medium would be more effective. From the model, the optimal solution was arrived at by the following calculation. X = 300,000/A (1+2+3+4+….n) + B (1+2+3+4…n) =300,000/ (299,800 + 23,515) = 0.927 The following results indicate that 92.7% of the total budget would be well utilized by the advertising mediums proposed by Tom. The following turn out is very pleasing and Tom was likely to receive many votes towards the policy. Of the constraints tom placed on this problem, which are preventing the objective function from being improved further? On the other hand, Tom placed some constraints that prevented further improvement the objective function. The objective function on full-page Sunday paper and 30-second radio spot are in significant because they cost a lot and serve the same purposes as the half-page Sunday magazine and 15-second radio spot respectively. In addition, long magazine advertisements are sometimes boring and time consuming and most people by pass them. The absence of such constraints would give Tom an opportunity to incorporate other advertising mediums like online ads. The marketing consultant provided short TV ads during the evening prime-time hours as the most effective medium of advertising. Suppose Tom was willing to increase the allowable number of evening TV ads. How much would this improve the solution? Improving the number of evening TV ads would cause a positive effect on the advertisement and increase the value of $23,515 into a higher level. Increased evening TV ads increases the impact rate since a high number of maximum decision units will be arrived at. In addition, improving the number of evening TV ads brings the proposed budget closer to the available amount increasing the effectiveness of the advertising mediums. The evening TV ads were the most effective because it is the time when most people watch news and this creates an opportunity to place advertisements in between news breaks. Moreover, most media companies encourage advertisers to place ads scheduled in the evening because most people are able to view them. By increasing the number of evening TV ads to 3 would improve the solution by 0.5 percent falling at $27, 042. Suppose Tom was willing to double the allowable number of radio ads aired each day. How would this improve the solution? Radio advertisement is another reliable method of delivering information to people. The value of $23,515 would increase significantly if Tom doubles radio ads since most people have access to radios through mobile phones, tablets, mobile radios, and home radios. In doubling the allowable number of radio ads, Tom would improve the solution with a significant margin. The radio ads should not be too long to avoid him incurring unnecessary chargers. 15-second radio ads providing all the necessary information would be the most appropriate in such a scenario. The cost of a 15-second radio spot is $150 while that of 30-second radio spot is $300. Doubling the number of short time TV ads would total to $300, which it eh total cost of one 30-second radio spot. The duration of an advertisement has no significant provided the main it delivers the desired message. Conclusions and Recommendations Linear programming spreadsheet forms the most effective method of calculating organizational budgets and other financial problems. Solving liner programming problems using a spreadsheet saves the person time and resources. The spreadsheet shown assisted in solving Tom’s problem by proposing the most convenient and cost effective medium of advertisement. From the results, short evening TV ads were found to be the most useful means of advertisement. On the other hand, the method provides simple ways of solving mathematical problems without much straining. Although the method was successful some issues here and there were noted. Firstly, more information on statistics of the type of media used by most people could have assisted in calculating the optimum solution. With the idea of the total number of people using a certain medium, it would be easier to define constraints and solve the problem in a faster manner. Secondly, Tom could have singled out some advertising mediums to make the number small. For instance, the half-page and full-page daily magazines could be combined and the most appropriate method adopted. In addition, Tom could have included other forms of advertisement like using the internet. With the current technology and flooding of social media sites internet advertising would be the most appropriate in order to reach all the youth in colleges and universities. The most appropriate forms of online advertisement are Google or Social sites like Face Book and Twitter. Works cited Ragsdale, C. Spreadsheet modeling and Decision Analysis (6th Ed.). Eagan MN: Cengage South Western. 2011. Read More