Go to the St. Louis Fed FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data website) and search for "Real GDP". You can also find GDP data (and many other data series) by clicking on "Categories", then "National Income & Product Accounts" and then GDP. For either method, select the "Billions of Chained 2009 Dollars*, Quarterly, Seasonally Adjusted** Annual Rate" and you should see a graph. To see a little more detail, adjust the lower limit of the date displayed to January 2000. This is accomplished by clicking on the first date in the field on the right-hand side above the graph, then clicking the double arrows that are to the left and right of the decade until you reach the 2000-2009 range, then click 2000. Then click on "Jan", and the graph will redraw itself to the new range.

Given the data that you found regarding the GDP of the country and thus the economic environment the company Scentsy finds itself, what business decisions might Scentsy you chose in Week 1 make? Might they need to adjust their pricing? Should they increase or decrease their output, or should they maintain the same level of production? Why? Are there other changes to the business environment that could affect Scentsy decisions or profitability (perhaps relating to other competing businesses or suppliers to the market in which your firm produces)? If this was 2005 (and you only had data through 2005), how would you answer those questions? What if this was 2009?

Please note that if you have selected a firm based or primarily operating in a foreign country, you can assume that the trends in the GDP for that country is the same as that of the trends of the GDP of the United States.