Betty Harrington owns a floor covering firm. Her market research is telling her that she is taking business away from the large home improvement stores in her trade area. One thing that Betty is worried about is that the large stores might fight back by lowering their prices, which hurts everyone except the consumer. The day-to-day challenge of firm growth that this example is referring to is:

Doogan corporation makes a product with the following standard costs: standard quantity or hours standard price or rate direct materials 2.0 grams $ 7.00 per gram direct labor 1.6 hours $ 12.00 per hour variable overhead 1.6 hours $ 6.00 per hour the company produced 5,000 units in january using 10,340 grams of direct material and 2,320 direct labor-hours. during the month, the company purchased 10,910 grams of the direct material at $7.30 per gram. the actual direct labor rate was $12.85 per hour and the actual variable overhead rate was $5.80 per hour. the company applies variable overhead on the basis of direct labor-hours. the direct materials purchases variance is computed when the materials are purchased. the materials quantity variance for january is: