An entrepreneur wants to determine whether it would be profitable to establish a gardening service in a local suburb. The entrepreneur believes that there are four possible levels of demand for this gardening service:
Very low demand 1% of the households would use the service.
Low demand 5% of the households would use the service.
Moderate demand 10% of the households would use the service.
High demand 25% of the households would use the service.
Based on past experiences in other suburbs, the entrepreneur assigns the following probabilities to the various demand levels:
P(High demand) = 0.10
P(Moderate demand) = 0.20
P(Low demand) = 0.50
P(Very low demand) = 0.20
The entrepreneur has calculated the following profits or losses ($) of this garden service for each demand level (over a period of one year): ACTION
DEMAND
Provide Garden Service
Do Not Provide Garden Service
Very low
-50000
low
60000
Moderate
130000
High
300000
a. Construct a decision tree. b. Construct an opportunity loss table. c. Compute the expected monetary value (EMV) for offering this garden service. d. Compute the expected opportunity loss (EOL) for offering this garden service. e. Explain the meaning of the expected value of perfect information (EVPI) in this problem. f. Compute the return-to-risk ratio (RTRR) for offering this garden service. g. Based on the results of (c), (d), and (f ), should the entrepreneur offer this garden service? Why? Before making a final decision, the entrepreneur conducts a survey to determine demand for the gardening service. A random sample of 20 households is selected, and 3 indicate that they would use this gardening service. h. Revise the prior probabilities in light of this sample information. (Hint: Use the binomial distribution to determine the probability of the outcome that occurred, given a particular level of demand.) i. Use the revised probabilities in (h) to repeat (c) through (g).