The Industry Trend Report

Length: 2500 words (in body, not including front and back materials)

Purpose

Business people compile formal reports on a number of topics for a variety of audiences and purposes. This trend report willbe an avenue to improve your report-writing skills, and will give you a head start in researching a field you are interested in entering. That research will include both library and internet searches as well as original research–observations, interviews, etc. Your goal is to create a report that you can be proud to show a future employer in the field. If you can’t reach that goal now, at least strive for it–and you will learn as much as possible.

Scenario

Make no mistake, I am your primary audience. As I said in class, I am unlikely to be an expert in your field. So you will need to take care to create a document that I can understand. At the same time, you should imagine a very potent secondary audience by thinking of this as a resume piece, something that a potential employer might look at before hiring you.
Assignment
Industry Trend Reports are most often compiled by industry analysts in the financial services sector. There, investing decisions are made on the basis of the financial health of the major players in the industry, and by the likelihood of innovations that can spur market growth and demand for products or services. You need not go into lengthy stock and financial analysis of companies, and in case are you to turn this into a profile of a company.
The only requirement is to spend your 2500 words wisely and economically. Outline the major trends both present and future. Make it engaging. Remember, you are telling me a story–a story about people engaging in enterprises that have built-in to them a series of conflicts. These might play out as corporate mergers and acquisitions, or choices over research and development (R&D) paths to take, particularly given that an organization cannot pursue everything. They are constrained, and in trying to solve problems and exploit opportunities, they must make choices. It’s in the rub of those choices that the story of your industry will reveal itself in a most engaging way.
This above all, should not be a lifeless report, but one that brings the industry to life and to light.
Structure

Your report should include the following parts, in this order:

MEMO of TRANSMITTAL (more on this later)
TITLE PAGE
CONTENTS PAGE
LIST OF FIGURES/ILLUSTRATIONS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
BODY
• Description of Industry, major problems/opportunities.
• Present Trends (with possible historical perspectives)
• Likely Future Trends (with relevant inductive reasoning, cause-effect analysis, etc.)
GRAPHICS INCLUDING TABLES, CHARTS, GRAPHS, and ILLUSTRATIONS, as appropriate, mixed into the text in a graphically clear, pleasing way. You will be graded on graphic design elements in your document. Flash will not make up for content weaknesses, in fact the best graphic design supports the content directly.
REFERENCES
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Procedure :

1) Select an industry, preferably from your major field, or from an industry you wish to enter after graduation. Some examples from previous quarters have included
• Automotive Engineering
• Automotive Racing Technology
• Motion Picture Production and Distribution
• Video/Computer Game Production
• Textiles Manufacturing and Marketing
• Food Service Franchising
• Commercial Real Estate Development in the Sacramento Area
• Winemaking in the Napa Valley (or the Sierra Foothills, etc.)
•
You’ll note that the last two are focused by region. If the concerns of one region are so different than another, then this may be a useful way to narrow an otherwise too-broad perspective, thus making it e asier to make meaningful observations and draw practical conclusions about where you think this industry is headed. You will spend time in and out of class brainstorming ideas for this report, doing internet research to gain some initial information on the industry, and submitting to me a formal email that commits to an industry.

We will be doing small projects along the way to hone your skills in writing process, description, definition, analysis, cause and effect, comparison and contrast, and argumentation. We will also engage in a thorough examination of style, its vagaries and its variations. These fundamental rhetorical strategies are the structural foundation for clear report writing. The smaller assignments will help to streamline the assembling of the report itself.

2) Once you have chosen your topic, you should begin research.

You will need a minimum of seven to eight sources. These should balance sources from the internet, library databases (magazines, newspapers, academic journal articles, and industry trade journals). But you are also required to interview one person directly. This can be a person working in the field (ideal) or a professor whose specialty offers an unusual perspective on the industry.
Your sources will have to be current, in- depth, interesting, and authoritative.

For secondary source materials, you must submit photocopies of cited pages, with relevant passages highlighted.
NOTE ON CITATIONS: In academic writing, different disciplines require different citation formats. Sciences typically use APA format, humanities use MLA format, and some fields use Chicago Manual of Style, Turabian, and others. I have no requirement about which you use, only that it be appropriate to your field. This means that for most of you, APA or MLA will be the norm. The main rule of thumb is to be consistent. We will not spend class time going over these formats, and in truth, most business situations are less concerned about the format of your citations than they are the legitimacy of them. This is one of several differences between business and academic writing.

Please read Section 10b, pp. 167-171 in Brereton for more information on citations in a business context.

NOTE on LETTER/MEMO of TRANSMITTAL: This is simply a brief cover letter that identifies the report and the circumstances of its writing. “As requested, please find the report on trends in the _____ industry. I compiled this report using….” It should be no longer than a paragraph and in this case be in Memo form, since the report is for internal communications.
day), respectively. Assume that the market is perfectly competitive, and that there is no entry or exit. US demand for Canadian oil is perfectly inelastic at 35 MMbbl/day in the winter, and 55 MMbbl/day in the summer. 1.1: On an annual basis, do you expect your pipeline to be profitable? Explain. 1.2: Suppose the marginal cost of all S-type pipelines (including yours) increases to $3.25/bbl, and the cost of R increases to $4.50. In the short-run, are these changes likely to raise your annual profits, lower your profits, or have no effect on your profits? 1.3: The XL pipeline encounters political resistance, and is forced to shut down for one month. Would this affect your profits more if the outage occurred in the winter, when demand tends to be fairly low, or in the summer when demand is higher? 1.4: Now suppose that you run an oil refinery in the US, and your only option is to buy oil from one of these Canadian exporters. Your refinery demands the same amount of oil on all days of the year, but the overall market is the same as in parts 1-3 above. If the marginal cost of the XL pipeline increases (if, say, environmentalists successfully lobby for a tax on XL oil), would that harm you more if it occurred in the winter or during the summer? Problem 2 Consider the optimal extraction problem associated with an exhaustible resource, such as oil or natural gas. 2.1: Discuss the main results of the Hotelling model outlined in class. Under what assumptions does this model hold? 1