II. STATEMENT OF PROBLEM AND
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The purpose of this study is to devise an objective basis for
costing SOPECAM's printing works such as the newspaper Cameroon Tribune
and also to set its selling price using the cost information obtained. The main
difficulty will concern the allocation and application of the company overheads
to the units of production. To perform this task in the right way, we need to
have adopted an objective and appropriate costing method such as the job
costing method that will help us in this task. The central problem of this
study will therefore be to provide the SOPECAM management with reliable and
accurate and scientific information about the unit cost of their main product
so that they will be able to evaluate the performance of that product and also
set a price that will reflect the real situation.
This study will be centred around three main research
questions:
Ø How to apply job costing to the company processes?
Ø What are the factors that should be taken into
account when costing the newspaper Cameroon Tribune?
Ø Finally, how could the results of job costing be used
in the pricing and cost control processes?
III. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
This study has as a main objective, the determination of a
reliable and precise figure for the unit cost of the newspaper Cameroon
Tribune using job costing, so that the pricing process will be conducted on
an accurate and objective basis.
The figure will be determined from two approaches: the
Marginal and Absorption costing approaches to the job costing
method.
Apart from the afore mentioned main objective, there are also
objectives of smaller scope such as:
Ø Determining the right allocation bases for the
company overheads.
Ø Measuring with great accuracy the amounts of raw
materials, labour time and other costs to be used in the production of the
newspaper.
Ø Finally, show the importance of a managerial and cost
accounting department in a company.
IV. RESEARCH HYPOTHESES
The study being oriented towards the determination of a unit
cost using two approaches to the job costing method, that is the marginal and
absorption costing approaches, we will therefore be interested in the
usefulness of each of these approaches to the pricing process and the company
cost control programmes.
The first hypothesis of this study will then assume that any
of these approaches can be used for both the pricing process and the cost
control programmes without distinction; that is the mean unit cost will be the
same for the two methods. This will be the «No difference
hypothesis».
The second hypothesis, which is the «Alternative
Hypothesis» states that the marginal approach is better for the cost
control programmes while the absorption approach provides more accurate and
reliable data for the pricing process.
By the end, the results of this study will guide us for the
conclusion to adopt as far as these hypotheses are concerned and we will
therefore know which of these approaches to use in each situation.
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