Final answer:
Setting up a direct sales force would not lead to cost savings due to the high costs associated with creating and maintaining a sales team. Market forces can incentivize businesses to reduce discriminatory practices when facing customer diversity, labor shortages, and competitive wages. Option A is correct.
Step-by-step explanation:
The option that would NOT lead to cost savings is A. A company that sets up its own direct sales force. Establishing a direct sales force can incur significant initial costs including hiring, training, and salary expenses, as well as ongoing costs related to management and personnel administration. In contrast, options B, C, D, and E typically lead to cost savings by streamlining processes, improving employee performance, leveraging online platforms, and optimizing supply chains, respectively.
Market forces can often give businesses an incentive to act in a less discriminatory fashion. For example, a local flower delivery business with a racially biased owner might recognize that maintaining a customer base consisting largely of the groups they are biased against is necessary for profitability, causing them to act less discriminatorily. Similarly, an assembly line traditionally hiring only men may be forced by labor shortages to hire women, reducing gender discrimination. Lastly, a home health care service firm with a biased owner who wants to pay lower wages to workers of a certain ethnicity might lose employees to competitors offering fair wages, thereby pressuring the firm to act less discriminatorily.