Economic Indicators
The Big Three automakers (General Motors, Ford Motors, and Chrysler Motors) went from a domestic auto market accountability of 70% of sales in 1998, to an all time low of 58.6% in 2004. The past four years were tough for the automakers. Declining market share and high inventories have forced the automakers to reduce assemblies in North America by 9.0% during the first half of 2005. "The automakers are currently struggling with an adverse operating environment due to the protracted price wars, and some serious cost competitive issues like increasing legacy costs, and frequent discords with the unions". Rising health care has affected the sales of Ford vehicles by an average of $1,200 dollars per unit; proactive price wars have also taken its toll on Ford vehicles with an average incentive of $3,795 dollars (Venkatakrishnan, 2005, 1-2).
The month of March was no exception to the declining trend of Ford Motor sales. Ford Motors reported a decline in sales of 4.6% from 2005, which equates to 291,146 lost sales. Not all the news were negative within the diversity of Ford's product line, sales of Ford's "F" series pickups rose by 4.5%, while sales from the Ford Explorer fell 31%, the Expedition lost sales by 13.4%, with the biggest drop in sales going to the Excursion line at 82.9% (Wong, 2006, 1-2).
In order to figure out the GDP of an economy, "Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the total market value of the final products and services produced in an economy in a one year period" (Colander), the country will have to add up all the output for that year and multiply the items by the price of the selling items. For example, cars can not be added to fruits by amounts, but the price related to those items added to ...