IPA IP 2020 Question 33
A question IPA Japan published in 令和2年度 10月 ITパスポート試験 公開問題 問33, translated into English. ITPEC is based on the same exams.
Company A, which conducts mail-order sales on the Internet, decided to place an advertisement for its product Y in an e-mail magazine issued by another company as a sales promotion measure. The advertisement works in such a way that when a subscriber of the e-mail magazine clicks the URL in the advertisement, the page of the product is displayed. When the assumptions of this sales promotion measure are as shown in the table, at least how many yen must the selling price of product Y be so that the balance of income and expenditure of this sales promotion measure does not become negative? Here, the purchase of product Y by a purchaser is limited to one (1) unit per person. In addition, other costs are not considered.
Explanation
2,000 yen — find how many people buy, then the margin each sale must earn to cover the 200,000 yen of promotion expenses.
- •Readers who click: 100,000 × 2% = 2,000 people
- •Buyers: 2,000 × 10% = 200 units (one per person)
- •Margin per unit needed: 200,000 ÷ 200 = 1,000 yen
- •Selling price: cost price 1,000 yen + margin 1,000 yen = 2,000 yen
At 2,000 yen the 200 sales bring 200 × (2,000 − 1,000) = 200,000 yen of gross margin, exactly the promotion cost, so the balance is zero; any lower price leaves it negative.
Answer (d)
Why not others:
- •(a) 1,020 — spreads the 200,000 yen over 10,000 buyers, applying the 10% purchase rate to all subscribers and skipping the 2% click rate; at 1,020 yen the 200 real buyers cover only 4,000 yen
- •(b) 1,100 — spreads the cost over the 2,000 readers who click, as if every one of them buys; the real 200 buyers cover only 20,000 yen
- •(c) 1,500 — a 500-yen margin on 200 units earns 100,000 yen, half the promotion cost
Key rule: Chain the conversion rates to get the number of buyers first, then require (price − unit cost) × buyers ≥ fixed promotion cost.
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This question comes from the past questions IPA Japan publishes, translated into English by ITPEC Practice. ITPEC Practice is an independent study tool and is not affiliated with IPA or ITPEC. See the original paper (PDF) or Report an issue.