Team Project; Classifying Information Each morning you stop and talk to the owner of a convenience store that is on your way to campus (and has good coffee and donuts). This morning the topic of the store’s income came up, and the manager tells you that yesterday a sales representative tried to sell her a new cash register system that would record sales for up to twenty-five individual product lines.
You think “Ah ha! Account classification—I know something about that.” The manager says she now keeps track of sales for gasoline separate from all other convenience items and she doesn’t know why she would want more information on other products. The store carries a variety of products; among them are magazines, dairy products, pop and beer, grocery items, and, of course, coffee and donuts. You don’t agree with her.
You think perhaps additional information could be useful.

a. Form teams, as indicated by your instructor. As a group, identify the different categories of sales that would be useful to the manager of a convenience store of this type and write a short memo on why you think her decisions could be improved with the additional information.

b. Earlier in the week the store manager had talked about the need to expand the store. She knows that the margin on the sale of convenience items is greater than on the sale of gasoline, so she wants to expand the store space. Visit at least one convenience store and identify the major product lines carried. See if you can find out what product lines have the best profit margins and include this information in your analysis. Draw up a proposal using the information from part a that will help her decide which product lines to expand.