Questões de Concursos Inglês

Opportunity Cost

This phenomenon goes by the name of ‘opportunity cost,’ since by not investing in more equipment and a more rigid production flow, the company is forgoing the opportunity to earn increased profits. These costs are every bite as real as the payment of dollars out-of-pocket.

This notion _______ opportunity cost can be reinforced _________a famous saying ______ Benjamin Franklin, no slouch himself _________ operations management. To make the point, however, we must make a brief excursion into logic. One truth of logic is the validity of the so-called contrapositive, which says simply that if the statement “If A, then B” is true, then it is also true that “If not B, then not A.” That is, of every time A occurs B follows, then we can be sure that if B does not occur, then A did not occur as well. Enough logic then, and back to Ben Franklin.

One of his Poor Richard sayings is that “A penny saved is a penny earned.” We have all recognized the truth of that since childhood, but I assert that by this saying Ben showed us he knows everything about opportunity cost. After all, what is the contrapositive of “A penny not earned is a penny not saved (i.e., a penny sent). All we are saying by this notion of opportunity cost is that “a penny not earned (an opportunity forgone) is a penny spent.” We shall often have occasion to consider opportunity costs, in analyzing and deciding various operations issues.

SCHMENNER, Roger W. Production/Operations Management. 5th Edition. Prentice-Hall, 1993.

If you take a look at my smartphone, you’ll know that I like to order out. But am I helping the small local businesses? You would think that if you own a restaurant you’d be thrilled to have an outsourced service that would take care of your delivery operations while leveraging their marketing might to expand your businesses’ brand. However, restaurant owners have complained of lack of quality control once their food goes out the door. They don’t like that the delivery people are the face of their product when it gets into the customer’s hand. Some of the delivery services have been accused of listing restaurants on their apps without the owners’ permission, and oftentimes publish menu items and prices that are incorrect or out of date.

But there is another reason why restaurant owners aren’t fond of delivery services. It’s the costs, which, for some, are becoming unsustainable. Even with the increased revenues from the delivery services, the fees wind up killing a restaurant’s margins to the extent that it’s at best marginally profitable. Therefore, some restaurants are pushing harder to drive orders from their own websites and offering special deals for customers that use their in-house delivery people.

The simple fact is that these delivery apps are here to stay. They are enormously popular and have significantly grown. I believe that restaurant owners that resist these apps are hurting their brands by missing out on potential customers. The good news is that the delivery platforms are not as evil as some would portray them. They have some skin in the game. They are competing against other services. They want their listed restaurants to profit. Maybe instead of fighting, the nation’s restaurant industry needs to proactively embrace the delivery service industry and figure out ways to profitably work together.

The Guardian. 02 December, 2020. Adaptado.

INSTRUÇÃO: Responder à questão com base no texto.

Rip Van Winkle is a classic American short story written by Washington Irving based on local history _____ with influences from European folklore. It tells the story of a man who lived near the Catskill Mountains in New York before the Revolutionary War and fell asleep for twenty years. Everything he knew _____ in the town was gone. _____, he learned that he had to navigate this new world as a free citizen of the United States.

Adapted from: http://www.supersummary.com/rip-van-winkle/summary/ and https://www.bookreports.info/rip-van-winkle-summary/

Read the text and asnwer questions:

HOME

They rose up like men. We saw them. Like men they stood.

We shouldn’t have been anywhere near that place. Like most farmland outside Lotus, Georgia, this here one had plenty scary warning signs. The threats hung from wire mesh fences with wooden stakes every fifty or so feet. But when we saw a crawl space that some animal had dug—a coyote maybe, or a coon dog—we couldn’t resist. Just kids we were.The grass was shoulder high for her and waist high for me so, looking out for snakes, we crawled through it on our bellies.The reward was worth the harm grass juice and clouds of gnats did to our eyes, because there right in front of us, about fifty yards off, they stood like men. Their raised hooves crashing and striking, their manes tossing back from wild white eyes. They bit each other like dogs but when they stood, reared up on their hind legs, their forelegs around the withers of the other, we held our breath in wonder. One was rust-colored, the other deep black, both sunny with sweat. The neighs were not as frightening as the silence following a kick of hind legs into the lifted lips of the opponent. Nearby, colts and mares, indifferent, nibbled grass or looked away. Then it stopped. The rust-colored one dropped his head and pawed the ground while the winner loped off in an arc, nudging the mares before him.

As we elbowed back through the grass looking for the dug-out place, avoiding the line of parked trucks beyond, we lost our way. Although it took forever to re-sight the fence, neither of us panicked until we heard voices, urgent but low. Igrabbedher arm and put a finger to my lips. Never lifting our heads, just peeping through the grass, we saw them pull a body from a wheelbarrow and throw it into a hole already waiting. One foot stuck up over the edge andquivered, as though it could get out, as though with a little effort it could break through the dirt being shoveled in. We could not see the faces of the men doing the burying, only their trousers; but we saw the edge of a spade drive the jerking foot down to join the rest of itself. When she saw that black foot with its creamy pink and mud-streaked sole beingwhackedinto the grave, her whole body began to shake. I hugged her shoulders tight and tried to pull her trembling into my own bones because, as a brother four years older, I thought I could handle it. The men were long gone and the moon was a cantaloupe by the time we felt safe enough to disturb even one blade of grass and move on our stomachs, searching for the scooped-out part under the fence. When we got home we expected to be whipped or at leastscoldedfor stayingout so late, but the grown-ups did not notice us. Some disturbance had their attention.

Since you’re set on telling my story, whatever you think and whatever you write down, know this: I really forgot about the burial. I only remembered the horses. They were so beautiful. So brutal. And they stood like men.

SOURCE: Excerpted from MORRISON,Toni. Home(2012), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2012.

How a Canadian Chain Is Reinventing Book Selling

By Alexandra Alter

About a decade ago, Heather Reisman, the chief executive of Canada’s largest bookstore chain, was having tea with the novelist Margaret Atwood when Ms. Atwood inadvertently gave her an idea for a new product. Ms. Atwood announced that she planned to go home, put on a pair of cozy socks and curl up with a book. Ms. Reisman thought about how appealing that sounded. Not long after, her company, Indigo, developed its own brand of plush “reading socks.” They quickly became one of Indigo’s signature gift items.

“Last year, all my friends got reading socks,” said Arianna Huffington, the HuffPost cofounder and a friend of Ms. Reisman’s, who also gave the socks as gifts to employees at her organization Thrive. “Most people don’t have reading socks — not like Heather’s reading socks.”

Over the last few years, Indigo has designed dozens of other products, including beach mats, scented candles, inspirational wall art, Mason jars, crystal pillars, bento lunchboxes, herb growing kits, copper cheese knife sets, stemless champagne flutes, throw pillows and scarves.

It may seem strange for a bookstore chain to be developing and selling artisanal soup bowls and organic cotton baby onesies. But Indigo’s approach seems not only novel but crucial to its success and longevity. The superstore concept, with hulking retail spaces stocking 100,000 titles, has become increasingly hard to sustain in the era of online retail, when it’s impossible to match Amazon’s vast selection.

Indigo is experimenting with a new model, positioning itself as a “cultural department store” where customers who wander in to browse through books often end up lingering as they impulsively shop for cashmere slippers and crystal facial rollers, or a knife set to go with a new Paleo cookbook. Over the past few years, Ms. Reisman has reinvented Indigo as a Goop-like, curated lifestyle brand, with sections devoted to food, health and wellness, and home décor.

Ms. Reisman is now importing Indigo’s approach to the United States. Last year, Indigo opened its first American outpost, at a luxury mall in Millburn, N.J., and she eventually plans to open a cluster of Indigos in the Northeast. Indigo’s ascendance is all the more notable given the challenges that big bookstore chains have faced in the United States. Borders, which once had more than 650 locations, filed for bankruptcy in 2011. Barnes & Noble now operates 627 stores, down from 720 in 2010, and the company put itself up for sale last year. Lately, it has been opening smaller stores, including an 8,300-square-foot outlet in Fairfax County, Va.

“Cross-merchandising is Retail 101, and it’s hard to do in a typical bookstore,” said Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, which analyzes the book industry. “Indigo found a way to create an extra aura around the bookbuying experience, by creating a physical extension of what you’re reading about.”

The atmosphere is unabashedly intimate, cozy and feminine — an aesthetic choice that also makes commercial sense, given that women account for some 60 percent of book buyers. A section called “The Joy of the Table” stocks Indigobrand ceramics, glassware and acacia wood serving platters with the cookbooks. The home décor section has pillows and throws, woven baskets, vases and scented candles. There’s a subsection called “In Her Words,” which features idea-driven books and memoirs by women. An area labeled “A Room of Her Own” looks like a lushdressing room, with vegan leather purses, soft gray shawls, a velvet chair, scarves and journals alongside art, design and fashion books.

Books still account for just over 50 percent of Indigo’s sales and remain the central draw; the New Jersey store stocks around 55,000 titles. But they also serve another purpose: providing a window into consumers’ interests, hobbies, desires and anxieties, which makes it easier to develop and sell related products.

Publishing executives, who have watched with growing alarm as Barnes & Noble has struggled, have responded enthusiastically to Ms. Reisman’s strategy. “Heather pioneered and perfected the art of integrating books and nonbook products,” Markus Dohle, the chief executive of Penguin Random House, said in an email.

Ms. Reisman has made herself and her own tastes and interests central to the brand. The front of the New Jersey store features a section labeled “Heather’s Picks,” with a display table covered with dozens of titles. A sign identifies her as the chain’s “founder, C.E.O., Chief Booklover and the Heather in Heather’s Picks.” She appears regularly at author signings and store events, and has interviewed prominent authors like Malcolm Gladwell, James Comey, Sally Field, Bill Clinton and Nora Ephron.

When Ms. Reisman opened the first Indigo store in Burlington, Ontario, in 1997, she had already run her own consulting firm and later served as president of a soft drink and beverage company, Cott. Still, bookselling is an idiosyncratic industry, and many questioned whether Indigo could compete with Canada’s biggest bookseller, Chapters. Skepticism dissolved a few years later when Indigo merged with Chapters, inheriting its fleet of national stores. The company now has more than 200 outlets across Canada, including 89 “superstores.” Indigo opened its first revamped concept store in 2016.

The new approach has proved lucrative: In its 2017 fiscal year, the company’s revenue exceeded $1 billion Canadian for the first time. In its 2018 fiscal year, Indigo reported a revenue increase of nearly $60 million Canadian over the previous year, making it the most profitable year in the chain’s history.

The company’s dominance in Canada doesn’t guarantee it will thrive in the United States, where it has to compete not only with Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but with a resurgent wave of independent booksellers. After years of decline, independent stores have rebounded, with some 2,470 locations, up from 1,651 a decade ago, according to the American Booksellers Association. And Amazon has expanded into the physical retail market, with around 20 bookstores across the United States.

Ms. Reisman acknowledges that the company faces challenges as it expands southward. Still, she’s optimistic, and is already scouting locations for a second store near New York.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01