【正文】 however, for internal reporting it may not be a good practice. By expensing orderfilling costs, management has no indication of the profitability of various customer groups because there is no cost assigned to customers. Knowing the sources of profitability can affect customer mix and product mix decisions. It can also have a significant effect on deciding which customer segments to serve (focusing strategy). 2. The total product consists of all benefits—both tangible and intangible—that a customer receives. One of the benefits is the orderfilling service provided by Jazon. Thus, it can be argued that these costs should be product costs, and not assigning them to products undercosts all products. There are more small orders than large (70,000 orders average 600 units), and these small orders consume more of the orderfilling resources. They should, therefore, receive more of the orderfilling costs. Furthermore, since segmenting products is equivalent to segmenting customers, we o。 10,800 247。 800,000 Unit cost ........................ $ * $ * *Rounded to the nearest cent. The difference favors Grayson。 227 CHAPTER 11 STRATEGIC COST MANAGEMENT QUESTIONS FOR WRITING AND DISCUSSION1. A petitive advantage is providing better customer value for the same or lower cost or equivalent value for lower cost. The cost management system must provide information that helps identify strategies that will create a cost leadership position. 2. Customer value is the difference between what a customer receives and what the customer gives up (customer realization less customer sacrifice). Cost leadership focuses on minimizing customer sacrifice. A differentiation strategy, on the other hand, focuses on increasing customer realization, with the goal of ensuring that the value added exceeds the costs of providing the differentiation. Focusing selects the customers to which value is to be delivered. Strategic positioning is the choice of the mix of cost leadership, differentiation, and focusing that a pany will emphasize. 3. External linkages describe the relationship between a firm’s value chain and the value chain of its suppliers and customers. Internal linkages are relationships among the activities within a firm’s value chain. 4. Organizational activities are activities that determine the structure and business processes of an anization. Operational activities are the daytoday activities that result from the structure and processes chosen by an anization. Organizational cost drivers are the structural and procedural factors that determine a firm’s longterm cost structure. Operational cost drivers are the factors that drive the cost of the daytoday activities. 5. A structural cost driver is a factor that drives costs associated with the anization’s structure, such as scale and scope factors. Examples include number of plants and management style. Executional cost drivers are factors that determine the cost of activities related to a firm’s ability to execute successfully. Examples include degree of employee participation and plant layout efficiency. 6. Valuechain analysis involves identifying those internal and external linkages that result in a firm achieving either a cost leadership or differentiation strategy. Managing anizational and operational cost drivers to create longterm cost reductions is a key element in the analysis. Valuechain analysis is a form of strategic cost management. It shares the same goal of creating a longterm petitive advantage by using cost information. 7. An industrial value chain is the linked set of valuecreating activities from basic raw materials to enduse customers. Knowing an activity’s relative position in the value chain is vital for strategic analysis. For example, knowing the relative economic position in the industrial chain may reveal a need to backward or forward integrate in the chain. A total quality control strategy also reveals the importance of external linkages. Suppliers, for example, create parts that are used in products downstream in the value chain. Producing defectfree parts depends strongly on the quality of parts provided by suppliers. 8. The three viewpoints of product life cycle are the marketing viewpoint, the production viewpoint, and the consumption viewpoint. They differ by the nature of the stages and the nature of the entity’s life being defined. The marketing viewpoint has a revenueoriented viewpoint, the production viewpoint is expense oriented, and the consumption viewpoint is customer value oriented. 9. The four stages of the marketing life cycle are introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. The stages relate to the sales function over the life of the product. The introduction stage is slow growth, the growth stage is rapid growth, the maturity stage is growth but at a decreasing rate, and the decline stage is characterized by decreasing sales. 10. Lifecycle costs are all costs associated with the product for its entire life cycle. These costs correspond to the costs of the activities associated with the production life cycle: research and development, production, and logistics. 228 11. The four stages of the consumption life cycle are purchasing, operating, maintaining, and disposal. Postpurchase costs are those costs associated with operating, maintaining, and disposing of a product. Knowing these costs is important because a producer can create a petitive advantage by offering products with lower postpurchase costs than products offered by petitors. 12. Agree. According to evidence, niy percent of a product’s costs are mitted during the development stage. Furthermore, $1 spent during this stage on preproduction a