WALMART/AMAZON CASE STUDY ASSIGNMENTWalmart has been the major player in discount retailing for decades with its vast number of physical stores distributed across both rural and urban areas in the United States. Amazon has been the major player in online retailing and has had dramatic growth in recent years. After struggling for decades to develop their own online retailing business, Walmart purchased Jet.com in 2016 which provided Walmart with important expertise in, and constituted a significant commitment to, online retailing. In 2017, Amazon purchased Whole Foods which included 460 brick-and-mortar grocery stores. These acquisitions clearly signaled competition between Walmart and Amazon in both in-store grocery sales and on-line grocery, as well as merchandise, sales. Your 500 words analysis of the case study entitled “Walmart’s Omnichannel Strategy: Revolution or Miscalculation?“ should address the following issues/questions.What are the comparative advantages of Walmart and Amazon and how will these comparative advantages affect the payoffs from their different strategic decisions?Discuss the strategic interaction between Walmart and Amazon. Why did Walmart think it necessary to enter the on-line retailing industry and why did Amazon think it beneficial to have a brick-and-mortar grocery store presence? Did Walmart decision influence Amazon’s decision and vice versa? How do the payoffs from their possible strategic decisions depend on the types of customer who are more likely to select purchases from Walmart over Amazon and purchases from Amazon over Walmart? When considering types of customers think in terms of different demographics and geographic location (rural versus urban for example).Why do both Walmart and Amazon consider it important to have both brick and mortar stores and a significant on-line presence?While I do not want you to necessarily discuss the question below in your writeup (unless you want to), I think it is important to think about the competition between Walmart and Amazon in the short run and long run.Is Walmart or Amazon currently in a stronger strategic position? Who will be in a stronger position in 10 years? What important strategic decisions will Walmart and Amazon have to make in the future?To complete this assignment, please carefully read the case study. To gain additional knowledge on the strategic decisions of Walmart and Amazon, feel free to read some of the over 300 articles cited in the case study (some are very interesting and provide additional details not contained in the case study), as well as any other sources you find (make sure you appropriately cite these other sources and do not plagiarize). I expect your 500 word writeup to be your thoughts in regards to the strategic interaction between Walmart and Amazon - I am not interested in quotes from others.Thoughts:The strategic interaction between Walmart and Amazon is too complicated to analyze using the basic game theoretic tools discussed in class to date. Therefore, I would suggest not presenting some normal form game or some basic extensive form game in your write up. I realize this assignment is somewhat open ended and students will have very different writeups – which is great. This assignment is about synthesizing a large amount of information on a complicated strategic environment and then present a coherent analysis on the strategic alternatives available to Walmart and Amazon. and the tradeoffs associated with these strategic alternatives. The next two case studies assignments will be much more narrow in terms of the write up and will relate to specific game theoretic material discussed in class.

Pringles and Preferences from the Value-Added Tax Base? Legislators put many preferences in tax laws with many different objectives in mind: to alter the distribution of tax burden for reasons of equity and to favor certain pro- ducers or consumers, to name two. Effects may sometimes be clear-cut, but there may be surprises in their application. There are interesting effects in the conflict between the UK tax authorities and Procter & Gamble UK, the producers of Pringles, as the following describes. Consider These Questions 1. Explain why Procter & Gamble wanted zero rating and not exemption. 2. Why would the VAT legislation not have explicitly covered Pringles? 3. Tax analysts counsel against tax preferences. How does this case provide support for that position? 4. What are the reasons for the food preference, and what are the reasons for the special treatment of potato crisps? Are there better alternatives for achieving those objectives? 5. Are there lessons for design of a consumption tax in this case?The VAT and Pringles "Are Pringles 'similar to potato crisps and made from the potato'? That is the ques- tion.1 Not as weighty as Hamlet's musing, but that is how Lord Justice Jacob (England and Wales Court of Appeal) began His judgment in a case between the Commissioners for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and Procter & Gamble UK, the makers of Regular Pringles. And that is what ultimately determined the decision regarding a tax preference in the United Kingdom value-added tax. Preference is always a tricky business because the tax authorities have to draw a line between what gets preference and what doesn't, and, accordingly, people end up paying relatively more and others pay relatively less because of where the line is drawn. in the law have to be put into practice in a world of brands, product distinctions, and a consistent desire to reduce tax burdens. The trick- iness gets more challenging as activities initially on the wrong side of the preferen Ce work to get moved to the other side. That is how, after all, that many tax lawyers and accountants justify their pay. Although the maneuvering with every preference, it gets more frantic when the tax wedge is high, when the tax involves excises (a nar-row base), and when substitute alternatives for taxed items are easily available. The UK value-added tax is levied at a standard rate of 17.5 percent. However, the law makes special provision for sales of food for at-home consumption in an effort to reduce the regressivity. In the UK VAT, "Food of a kind used for human consumption" is zero-rated, meaning it is subject to a tax rate of zero. However, the tax preference is limited and not applicable to everything that humans might eat. An exception is the following: Any of the following when packaged for human consumption without further preparation, namely, potato crisps, potato sticks, potato puffs and similar products from the potato, or from potato flour, or from potato starch, and savory products obtained by the swelling of cereals or cereal products; and salted or roasted nuts other Those products are subject to the standard tax rate of 17.5 percent. Now the question is: What are Pringles? Many people have pondered this question in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom, although not in court and not with regard to their taxation, since their arrival on the market in 1968. However, such philosophical questions were not what the Procter & Gamble representatives were concerned about here; it was tax rates. Procter & Gamble argued that Pringles should be taxed at zero rate, not the standard rate, because they really are not potato crisps. "Their argument primarily hinged on the fact that the Pringle is only around 40 percent potato and the majority was something else, although no other single ingredient made up as much of the total as potato. Therefore, they argued that it wasn't a potato crisp and should be zero rated along with other items for human consumption. Strictly, Pringles were not "made of" potatoes. That would allow con sumers of Pringles to pay less and would also allow Pringles a price advantage in the snack food market (although Procter Gamble did not point that out in their argu ment). It should be noted, however, that there are other vegetable crisps available on the UK market (e.g., turnip crisps), and they were not excluded from the preference. The judge was not impressed: “the VAT legislation uses everyday English words, which ought to be interpreted in a sensible way according to their ordinary and natural meaning. The 'made from' question would probably be answered in a more relevant and sensible way by a child consumer of crisps than by a food scien tist or a culinary pedant. 183 The ruling meant around $ 155 million in back taxes (which had not been collected from purchasers because of an earlier ruling) and much more to be collected in the future. If it crunches like a potato crisp, looks generally like a potato crisp, and pretty much tastes like a potato crisp, it should be treated like a potato crisp, no matter what the lawyers make their living by arguing. Child consumer trumps food experts.

In a finitely repeated prisoner's dilemma what is the optimal strategy for each player? PROFESSOR'S GUIDANCE FOR THIS WEEK'S LE: Prisoners' dilemma is one of the most celebrated topics in whole game theory. In that two agents engage in a game with payoffs that has a Nash equilibrium that shuns cooperation. Here we want to investigate the possible outcome if these agents play with each other again and again. Maysaa Al Mashaykhi on Tuesday, November 30, 2021, 10:04 PM Prisoner's dilemma is a strange but exciting thought experiment/game that can teach us why some cooperation strategies are better than others. The game is interesting because there's a slight advantage longer term when you cooperate with others, even though there's a slight disadvantage in the short term. You don't benefit as much immediately, but the entire month's reduction increases faster if you stick to cooperation over time. That is how some people believe partnership evolved — a group of cooperators becomes more substantial over the long haul. Each player chooses a strategy of two moves (Cooperate and Defect). The logic describes when they want to cooperate with others and when they don't. All you must go on is your past communications with that player. The definition of a strategy in a repeated game determines the player's choice for each history, particularly for histories that cannot be outcomes of the repeated game (Bravetti & Padilla,2018). As a result, the joint strategy from the item (i) is not a unique Nash equilibrium of G(k) when players have two or more strategies in the stage game. Below are the strategies with their pros and cons. Always Cooperate Strategy: Cooperate with every move. That is the strategy that exemplifies "why can't we all just get along?" Pros: Always Cooperate is the most generous strategy available. It's a viable strategy in environments of highly high trust, like high-functioning teams. Cons: Cooperation without confidence is an invitation for a lot of abuse. Always Defect Strategy: Defect every move. This strategy explains the lost faith in cooperation. It's the ultimate protective strategy because nobody can turn you into a victim. Pros: You will always win or tie against any candidate because they never have an opening to take points from you. Cons: Though you win or tie every round, you do so at a lower point threshold than cooperation would have reached. Tit for Tat Strategy: Start by cooperating. Copy whatever the other player made the last move. The punishment matches the crime. If someone defects against you, then immediate fault against them. If they begin cooperating again, then you start collaborating again too. It's the incarnation of strict fairness. Pros: Because Tit for Tat starts by cooperating and then copies the other player's last move, it acts like Always Cooperate when interacting with it. Cons: This strategy plays to tie, not to win. A. Bravetti & P. Padilla. (2018). An optimal strategy to solve the Prisoner's Dilemma. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-20426-w \ Mo'ath Awawdeh on Wednesday, December 1, 2021, 10:59 PM Game theory is the study of interactions between players. Players can be you versus a company targeting you to buy its products, countries at war, or companies competing for markets. Game theory studies making decisions with consideration of opponents and their movements. (Harsanyi, 2013) This theory takes a certain strategy similar to the game of chess in which you do not know what your opponent is thinking but you will choose the best thing for your benefit and to defeat him. And any decision taken affects the future of the game, either harm or benefit. (Dixit, 2005) The most common (dominant) strategy is the strategy that gives satisfactory results regardless of the opponent’s move, and this, in turn, constitutes a Nash equilibrium, a strategy that is formed when each fork chooses the interest of the strongest and his right choice and forms his dominance, each of the dominant strategies constitutes a Nash equilibrium, which is a mathematical analysis of situations of conflict of interest. (Crawford, 1979) Example: This concept helped the British government increase its financial returns, as it used Nash Balance to design the auction for the sale of 3G operating licenses to the telecom company and relied on its ploy to consider the auction as a game and adapted its rules to become the best strategy for bidders is to bid through bidding at prices. Nash's policy makes all parties to the game win, without any of them losing to gain the other, and each party moves into the equation from the reality of conviction for an average gain and not greed for the maximum possible gain. (Neti, 2012) Because the odds of losing without Nash's theory are greater than the odds of losing with the theory, on the contrary, it would be better for the company to choose options and competitions within reason and neglect requests that are greedy. The chances of success with a reasonable investment are much greater than the chance of success with others. (Crawford, 1979) References: Harsanyi, J. C. (2013). Papers in game theory (Vol. 28). Springer Science & Business Media. Dixit, A. (2005). Restoring fun to game theory. The Journal of Economic Education, 36(3), 205-219. Crawford, V. P., & Varian, H. R. (1979). Distortion of preferences and the Nash theory of bargaining. Economics Letters, 3(3), 203-206. Neti Maruti Ramanarayana, S. (2012). Towards a theory of software diversity for security (Doctoral dissertation, Carleton University). Offer at least two 200-300-word comments (replies) to posts from your peers’ discussions by to earn a maximum of 8 points each