Question

Pettit Ice Cream Company produces various ice cream products for which demand is highly seasonal. The company sells more ice cream in warmer months and less in colder ones. Last year, the high point in production activity occurred in August when Pettit produced 50,000 gallons of ice cream at a total cost of $82,000. The low point in production activity occurred in February when the company produced 20,000 gallons of ice cream at a total cost of $46,000.
Required:
a. Use the high-low method to estimate the amount of fixed cost per month incurred by Pettit Ice Cream Company
b. Determine the total estimated monthly cost when 40,000 gallons of ice cream are produced.
c. What factors could cause the estimate determined in Requirement b to be inaccurate?
d. Explain how regression analysis could be used to improve accuracy. Your explanation should in- clude a discussion of the R2 statistic as well as the potential impact of multiple regression analysis.

Answer 1

Answer:

a) Fixed costs = $22,000

b) $70,000

c) The high low cost method is generally inaccurate because it only considers the extremes, the highest and lowest costs and activity levels. Generally costs are not linear, but they might follow a certain tendency. The advantages of the high low cost method is that it is fairly accurate when costs are stable, plus it is much simpler to calculate.

d) Assuming that costs follow a certain tendency, regression analysis is much more exact since it analyses the relationship between different data and different variables. When you analyze only 2 variables, a linear regression analysis will serve you. but if you need to analyse more than two variables, then you must use a multiple regression analysis.

The R² statistic basically measures how one variable's variance is affected by other variables. E.g. if R² is 0.75, then 75% of the variance of A will be explained by the variance of B.

Explanation:

variable cost using high low cost method = (highest activity cost - lowest activity cost) / (highest activity level - lowest activity level) = ($82,000 - $46,000) / (50,000 - 20,000) = $36,000 / 30,000 gallons of ice cream = $1.20 per gallon of ice cream

fixed costs = $82,000 - (50,000 x $1.20) = $22,000

40,000 gallons

$22,000 + (40,000 x $1.20) = $70,000

how regression analysis improves accuracy of high low cost method