Economic factors: gross domestic product (GDP)

Respond to the following scenario with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. Be substantive and clear, and use research to reinforce your ideas.

You’re meeting with Lester in his office to discuss the details of your presentation to the board next week.

“Given all of the research that you have completed over the past several weeks,” he says, “you should have most of the information you need to make a presentation to the board. The board doesn’t want you to do any more research on all of the topics; rather, we want you to summarize the research that you have already done. ”

“Yes,” you say. “I think I have what I need.”

“Of course we want your final conclusion and recommendation on what the company should do regarding the location issue, as well,” he says.

“What type of presentation do you have in mind, Lester?”

“A PowerPoint presentation would be appropriate for this group,” he says. “I want you to include slide notes, too, in case we have to go back and look at something at a later date. Your PowerPoint presentation should contain between 7-10 slides, not including the title slide and reference slide(s). For each slide, you should have between 150–200 words in the Notes sections. Let’s take a few minutes now to go over how the slides should be organized. I’ve done similar presentations, so I can save you some time with a few pointers.”

When you get back to your office, you type out your notes about each element you discussed and the overall organization of the presentation. For this presentation, you are addressing the following elements:

• Legal, social, and financial factor considerations
• Economic factors: gross domestic product (GDP), inflation, interest rates, unemployment
• Elasticity of demand
• Economies of scale and efficiency
• Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT)
• Market structure
• Risk
• Costs (marginal, fixed, variable, etc.)
• International expansion (Five factors that should be considered before making the decision to expand internationally