Charles Books Club - Problem Analysis and Statistics for Technical Business Reports - Research Paper Example

Problem Analysis and Statistics for Technical Business Reports Name institution Institution Subject Instructor TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Summary 4 1.0.Introduction 6 1.1.Objectives for the Study 8 1.2.Background Knowledge 8 2.0.Data 10 2.1.Quantitative Sampling Procedures 10 2.2.Quantitative Sampling Methods 10 2.2.1.Sampling Distribution 11 I.Time-series Data 12 II.Cross-Sectional Data 12 III.Standard error 12 III.0.Statistical Treatment 13 III.1.Major Findings 15 III.1.1.Answers to the questions 16 III.2.Analysis 17 III.3.Discussion 17 III.4.Summary and Conclusion 18 III.5.Recommendations for future investigations 19 III.6.Limitations of the Data 20 III.7.References 21 4.0 Appendices 23 List of Tables Table 1. Comparison table for purchase of books…………………………………………13 Table 2 Summary of data collected from the survey………………………………………22 List of Figures Figure 1. A Graph of Types of Books Bought against the Number of Customers………………15 Figure 2.Corresponding Pie-Chart to the Number of Customers that Purchased specific books..23 Group Names:_______________________________________________ Date: Unit:____________________________________________________ Semester:________________________________________________ Institution:_______________________________________________ Executive Summary This paper provides a report on a study that was conducted at Charles Books Club to provide information concerning customer base as well as, determining the strategies that could be used to select customers that were relevant to the new title ‘The Art History of Florence’. It involves the use of customer databases that are existing within the company to determine the trend in purchase of books from the company as well using the trend to determine prospective customers for the new book, ‘The Art History’ of Florence. This will be useful for the new management in determining customers to be targeted when trying to maximize the sales of the new title of books. Furthermore, it demonstrates an approach that has been used by CBC to achieve customer satisfaction and understanding customer requirements to achieve maximum sales for their book. It includes the use of factual information obtained from customer data to sample the population to obtain inferences regarding population in the sample. It also includes the discussion of the sampling procedure by collecting statistical information that is contained in the company’s database and the analysis of the statistical findings and theories. The primary data contained in the customer database is used to come up with tables, graphs that are significant in analysis of the data. It includes statistical analysis by investigating measurable variables of collected data to come up with a report regarding customer trends thus resulting into arrival at a judgment regarding validity of the findings as well as their reliability. The statistical analysis section results into information that is used to make objective judgment regarding the approach that can be used to market the new boo to customers online so that maximum sales are obtained. This report also includes a discussion of the findings of the research and the analysis of the findings by providing an interpretation of the results. It also gives a quantitative recommendations on how decisions need to be made and decisions that need to be made to solve the current problems being encountered by the company. The discussion of the findings includes a critical analysis of the results of the findings as well as a supporting statement in argument for the recommendations for actions that need to be implemented for future operations. Finally, the report includes a summary of the project by suggesting solutions that can be implemented by CBC. This is done by providing supporting evidence to enhance validity of the recommendations. 1.0. Introduction The main purpose of this report is to present a finding for the study that was conducted at Charles Book Club (CBC) to assist in improving the sales of a new title of book as well as, improvement of the current situation at the company. This is because, the company has been experiencing periods of uncertainties in sales following the abandonment of the use of customer information as way of maintaining high levels of sales of their books by targeting customers who are willing to buy the new set of books. This will ensure that the company attains high levels of profit from its online marketing activities. Additionally, there is the need to know customers better and enable a range of targeted campaigns to the right audience through mailing of customer requests. This is because, the use of customer data was considered the contributing factor towards accomplishment of marketing activities as noted by Grover & Vriens (2006). Thus this report provides an approach that can be used to implement customer information in marketing the book type that has been introduced to the company. The use of customer information is used to conduct statistical analysis of customer history which results into arrival to the desired conclusion on the right approach for marketing their books (Rubin & Babbie, 2010). The data involved in this study is obtained from mails that were sent randomly to a sample of customer on their preferences for the books of the company. Essentially, the overall objective of the organization is not to be left behind in the online business activity as there is usually high level of competition for the products from a number of online distributors. This report acts as a guide to the new management that has acquired the company and needs to know the business operating conditions and the customer trends. It also assists in knowing customer preferences and coming up with the right marketing approach for the new set of books. The report is also significant in knowing the relationship between the company and their customers. This is useful in knowing the least popular books in the company as well as the most popular books (Association of American Publishers, 2002). This finding is useful for the new management in number of way. It will be useful in determining ways of maintaining sales capacity of the most popular books as well as determining marketing changes that need to be made to ensure the new sets of boos are selling well in the market. There is also certain information that this reports avails to the new management. For instance, it will be able to provide information regarding the ratio of male to female customers. It will also be useful in knowing the amount of money spent by customers in the purchase of the new set of books. 1.1. Objectives for the Study This report provides an approach that can be used to market the new title of books ‘Florence Art book Strategy’. This involves the use of results from mails sent to customers and using the feedback to come up with the right strategy for marketing the product as well as determining whether the new set of books will be sold effectively to ensure the company does not operate at a loss. The main objectives of this report include the following: To determine the number of male and female buyer of the book ‘Florence Art book’. To determine the total sales for the book ‘Florence Art’ book. To develop a statistical approach that can be used to estimate the customer attitude towards the new set of books To determine the trends in purchase of books in the company by including characteristics such as subject areas and the gender of purchase of these books. 1.2. Background Knowledge The process of making a report on the activities at CBC has been simplified by the provision of data regarding customer purchase of books in the company over the past periods as well as in the current survey. This data includes a range of information that is useful in understanding customer trends in this company. During purchases of books in this company, customer information such as gender, type of book purchased is kept. In addition, frequency of sales to a particular customer is recorded. This is useful in coming up with the conclusion regarding most loyal customers to the company. It also assists in ensuring marketing is targeted towards these loyal customers. The company also records the category of purchase of a particular book such as Youth Books, Art Books and Cook books among others. This information is used to determine the total purchase of books by category and assist in determining the most popular book among customers. The other variable that is recorded is the time lapse between the first and the subsequent purchase. This assists in coming up with conclusion regarding the frequency of customers during the purchase of books of this particular type. It also determines the time taken before customers respond to the initial purchase. This is useful in coming up with the right marketing techniques that can be used to shorten the duration between the initial purchase and the subsequent purchase. The report also includes record of data concerning prices paid by customers at the company such as the amount of money paid during the purchase of a particular book. This assists in coming up with a total amount concerning the purchase of a particular book. It acts as guide in determining the popularity of books and their relationship with prices. This report implements the use of statistical techniques to come up with an explanation for customer trends at CBC that assists the management in knowing the approaches for dealing with competition from other online books sellers. It involves the use of existing information regarding purchase of books to compute statistical characteristics that are useful in coming up with a conclusion for the report The raw data from customer sales records are then used to conduct statistical analyses which are significant in coming up with the correct conclusion. 2.0. Data The data required for the analysis of the study was obtained from previous sales records as well as, samples that were collected by the company during the launch of the new book ‘Art of Florence’. The sample involved a survey that was conducted among 800 customers as well as data that were found within the company regarding initial transactions. The table below shows a sample of data that was used for analysis to arrive at a conclusion regarding customer trends at CBC as well as coming up with recommendations for future activities. 2.1. Quantitative Sampling Procedures This method was used to obtain a small sample that represents the characteristics of population in their response to the sale of books in the company (Association of American Publishers, 2002). It was assumed that each member of the population had an equal chance of being selected in the sample. The sample was then used to make inferences about the population being studied. 2.2. Quantitative Sampling Methods In the sampling process a data sample was obtained by selecting 800 random samples from customer information that already exists within the company as well as conduction of surveys to help in understanding the nature and characteristics of the entire population. At the CBC, the sales of each book type was determined by getting the total number of customers that had bought that type of book to indicate popularity of the book in order to improve the sales of the book. In the analysis of the sampling process, 19 participants were used for the analysis in which the time of purchase, price of the book purchased and the time duration between the initial purchase and the subsequent purchase was determined to know the mechanics of the sampling process since they were applicable to financial variables. The requirement for random sampling was achieved by rigorously coding every member of the population with a number and then using a random number generator to select a subset. Since it was not possible to label every member of the population, it was necessary to use systematic sampling methods because it was difficult to contact all the customers who had visited the company. A systematic sampling was performed by selecting customers that had purchased books from the company in a period of 2 months, 5 months and 7 months. This resulted into a total number of 19 customers and it was accomplished in a random manner and did not favor any customer. 2.2.1. Sampling Distribution This study involved the selection of a sample of 19 participants in the survey to represent the entire population. The characteristics of the sample were used as a measure of the characteristics of the entire population. In the assessment of the quality of a sample, the approach involved comparing the sample distribution to the entire population distribution. It was assumed that the sample distribution represents a similar characteristic of the population distribution. For instance, it was assumed that if the sample showed that Child Books were the most frequently purchased books, the sample should also show that the title ‘Child Books is the most popular type of book among customers. If the sample shows skewness during the expectation of a normal pattern with most observations being nearer to the mean, it indicates that there are potential problems to the sample and the process of data analysis. Other sampling methods that were used include the following: I. Time-series Data Time series data is the process of taking one variable over the discrete particular period of time. The main distinguishing factor of a time series is that it draws back the history to indicate the variations that a single variable has undergone (Gorard, 2003). Major cases include the use of historical quarterly purchases on books for the last five years, average earnings per book title in each quarter of the last five years or changes in market-o-book ratio on book stocks for a period of 20 years. In each case, an examination of the time periods is done. II. Cross-Sectional Data This is the process where a particular period is focused on and a specific variable is measured across a number of companies or organizations ( Grover & Vriens, 2006). A cross-sectional study would focus on sales on books per for each quarter and their corresponding earnings. The specific variable being measured may have similarity to time series analysis, with the distinction being that a particular time period provides the focus and there are a number of book types that are being studied. III. Standard error Standard error can also be used as a method of determining standard deviation of the study sample. Variance is mainly obtained by dividing population variance with the number of samples. Standard error is obtained by getting the positive square root of the variance (Poynter, 2010). Following the calculation of the standard deviation, standard error can be obtained by applying the ratio: population standard deviation/ square root of the sample size. For instance, when the standard deviation of the population is not known, the sample standard deviation can be used to provide the estimation. Since the samples size is a denominator, standard error becomes smaller as the size of the sample becomes larger. III.0. Statistical Treatment The major statistical treatment involved the use of data that was collected from the survey process as well as the existing data within the business to analyze the business process and come up with conclusion regarding customer trends in the business. The raw data was obtained by mailing questions to customers regarding their purchases in the company as recommended by Grossnickle& Raskin (2001). For instance, customer who participated in the sampling process was required to provide information relating to the number of books they had bought from the company. They were also required to provide information relating to the types of books they had bought as well as the frequency of their visit to the company. Table 1 shows the raw data that was collected for analysis. Below is a table showing the types of books that were bought and the number of customers who purchased them. Type of Book Number of customers Arts Florence 1 Related Purchase 6 Italian Arts Review 0 Italian Arts 0 Italian Cooking Books 2 Geography Books 4 Reference Books 0 Do-it-yourself Books 2 Cook Books 4 Youth Books 1 Child Books 5 Total 25 Table 1. Comparison table for purchase of books The table above shows that the most popular book was related purchases to Art History of Florence Books, followed by Child books then Cook Books and Geography Books, followed by Italian Cook Books and Do-it-yourself Books. These were followed by Art History of Florence Books then finally Youth Books. Furthermore, Reference books, Italian Arts Review Books and Italian arts Books did not get any customers. A graph was drawn to show the distribution of customers in the purchase of these books. The following graph shows the number of customers that purchased books of various categories. Figure 1. A Graph of Types of Books Bought against the Number of Customers III.1. Major Findings From the empirical data of the survey, it was found that the number of male customers was 11 while female customers were 8 per cent. This implies that male buyers constituted 57.89% of the total customers while female buyers constituted 42.11% of the total number of customers. The empirical data also showed that the total amount of money spent in purchase of all the books by the sample was $ 1365. The overall outcomes of the analysis are summarized in the table below. Variable Value Total Number of Customers in the sample 19 Number of Male customers 11 Number of Female Customers 8 Total Amount Spent by all the Customers $ 1365 Average Amount Spent by each customer $ 71.84 Most Popular Book Related Purchases to Art History of Florence Leas Popular Book Italian arts, Italian Arts Reviews and Reference Books Table 2. Summary of data collected from the survey The highest number of customers purchased books that were related to Art History of Florence. This information will be significant in determining the attractive feature that makes customers like this type of book so that marketing of Art History of Florence is also done in a manner that shows customers they can get the same benefits by using Art History of Florence. This data also shows that there are more male customers in comparison to female customers. It also shows that the average amount of money spent by each customer during purchase of books at the company is $71.84. The overall results also shows that ‘Art History of Florence’ is not very popular in comparison to other books despite being purchased. Thus it acts as a warning to marketers of CBC that there is the need to step up their efforts in marketing the book. III.1.1. Answers to the questions 1. What proportion of customers is male and what proportion is female? From Figure 1, the number of males in the sample is 11 while the number of females is 8. Hence, males customers constituted 57.89 % while female customers constituted 42.11% of the sample. 2. Typically, how much do customers spend? I there a difference between males and females? In a sample of 19 customers, it was found that the total amount of money spent was $1365 on the books. This implies that the average expenditure of a customer in the company is $71.84. The amount spent by male customers was $947 while that spent by female customers was $ 418. This indicates that male customers made more purchases compared to female customers. 3. What types of books are the most popular? The most popular book was ‘Related Purchases’. This is because it was bought by the highest number of customers i.e. 6 customers which was the highest number. 4. What else do you think might be of interest to the new owner? Do some extra analysis and include it. The other thing which might be of interest to the new owner is the effect of price of a book on its popularity. This can be analyzed by comparing the prices of books with the number of customers that purchased them. This is illustrated in the table below. Type of Book Number of customers Selling Price $ Arts Florence 1 123 Related Purchase 6 32 Italian Arts Review 0 24 Italian Arts 0 26 Italian Cooking Books 2 95 Geography Books 4 26 Reference Books 0 49 Do-it-yourself Books 2 22 Cook Books 4 22 Youth Books 1 78 Child Books 5 135 Total 25 - Table 3. A Comparison of relationship between price of a book and popularity of the book. From the above table, it can be observed that expensive books were equally popular as cheaper books. Thus, it can be concluded that price of a book does not have an effect on popularity of the book. III.2. Analysis The data obtained from statistical treatment of the raw data shows that most of the buyers of books from CBC are male. It indicates that online marketing should be targeted towards reaching more males than female customers. The data also shows that purchase of ‘Italian Arts’ and ‘Italian Arts Review’ is least popular in the company. This leads the possibility of making the decision to remove these books from marketing process and focus on the most rewarding books in the company. For instance, die to the popularity of Related Purchases to “Art History of Florence “, Child Books”, “Cook Books” and “Geography Books”, there is the need to ensure online marketing of these books is enhanced to improve sales for the company. III.3. Discussion The results of the analysis are significant in assisting the new management of CBC on the customer trend at the company. This information provides them with the overviews of customer attitudes towards theory books as well as distribution of customers in terms of gender and popularity levels of books. This information is significant in providing the new management with a guide on the right approach towards online marketing. For instance, the results of the analysis shows that ‘Art History of Florence’ are not very popular in comparison to other books such as Child Books, Geography books or Cook Books. This will guide the management to make the decision to market these popular books in preference to ‘Art History of Florence’ Books. It will also mean, that strategies are developed that customers are aware of the benefits associated with the purchase of ‘Art History of Florence’. This strategy can be obtained by asking the customers who bought ‘Art History of Florence’ to explain their motives for purchasing the book (Bernard, 2011). This will ensure that online marketing intelligence is derived from the data that enable CBC marketers conduct multiple campaigns targeted at the right audience who will be prospective customers for their products. Consequently, when ‘Art History of Florence’ is released, the new management will get easy time in marketing the book by targeting the most prospective customers for the product. This will ensure they operate at high efficiency while the right customers are reached to maximize sales of the new title of “Art History of Florence’. III.4. Summary and Conclusion This report shows that marketing activities at CBC can be achieved through focusing on prospective customers. It also shows that the use of customer information during purchase is significant in analyzing their preferences in terms of the types of books that they would like to buy and the most popular book among customers. Generally, the report involves a survey in which a sample of customers is asked to provide information regarding their shopping history with the company. The sample is then used for analysis which involves determination of the average sales for each book. Sampling methods used in the study are also explained. These include the use of quantitative sampling methods such as random sampling, time series data and cross-sectional data. These sampling methods assist in explaining the relationship between variables and their characteristics. This is followed by statistical treatment which involves the construction of graphs and tables to explain the nature of empirical data from the survey. The analysis also involves tabulation of survey information and construction of graphs to explain the nature of the variables used in the survey. The report also includes an analysis of sales reports in terms of gender distribution among the sample. It is assumed that the sample represents the characteristics of the entire pollution. Thus the outcome from the sample survey is used to arrive at a conclusion that is recommended for implementation by the new management. III.5. Recommendations for future investigations This report is very useful for the management of CBC in coming up with the right approach in marketing its new tile. It will result into target marketing where only prospective genders will be contacted while ensuring that the most popular books are marketed. It will also act as a guide on the method of using customer information to gain marketing intelligence. However, there are some improvements that need to be made in future research in order to come up with the correct marketing approaches. For instance, it would be significant of future research is targeted towards obtaining opinions of customers regarding the books they had purchased. This will be useful in knowing where weaknesses are involved in marketing process so that changes are made. In addition, the results of the analysis would be more reliable if correlation between each variable and other variables were conducted. T is recommended that future research shows the correlation between variables that affect marketing process. III.6. Limitations of the Data The data above has enabled understanding of popularity of the new title ‘Art History of Florence’ in relation to other titles in the CBC marketing process. However, there are some limitations that need to be addressed in order to obtain the right conclusion regarding the book title. The research was conducted before customers were aware of the book; hence most of them did not know the benefits that they would get if the purchased the book. This leads to unreliability of the answers provided by respondents regarding their preferences for the book. It would be better if the research was conducted when the book had been released for sales. This would lead to a more reliable conclusion regarding customer’s attitude towards it. The data also depended on sample data to assume that the entire population was similar to the sample characteristics. The fact is that there may be variations of the total population characteristics from the sample data. This condition leads to a possibility of sampling error in data analysis. III.7. References Association of American Publishers, (2002). Industry Statistics.NewYork: Sage. Bernard, H. R. (2011). Research methods in anthropology: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Lanham, Md: AltaMira Press. Gay, R., Charlesworth, A., & Esen, R. (2006). Online marketing: A customer-led approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gorard, S. (2003). Quantitative methods in social science. New York, NY [u.a.: Continuum. Grossnickle, J., & Raskin, O. (2001). Handbook of online marketing research. New York [u.a.: McGraw-Hill. Grover, R., & Vriens, M. (2006). The handbook of marketing research: Uses, misuses, and future advances. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Lee, O. (2001). Internet marketing research: Theory and practice. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing. Neergaard, H., & Ulhøi, J. P. (2007)’. Handbook of qualitative research methods in entrepreneurship. Cheltenham [etc.: Elgar. Poynter, R. ‘2010’. The handbook of online and social media research: Tools and techniques for market researchers. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K: Wiley. Rubin, A., & Babbie, E. R. (2010). Essential research methods for social work. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning. Schröder, C. (2010). The Internet as a device for market research. München: GRIN Verlag. Tenenbaum, G., & Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Methods of research in sport sciences: Quantitative and qualitative approaches. Oxford [u.a.: Meyer & Meyer Sport. Van, H. M. (2007). Market Research Handbook. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. VanderStoep, S. W., & Johnston, D. D. (2009). Research methods for everyday life: Blending qualitative and quantitative approaches. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 4.0 Appendices i. Table of percentage of the entire sample that bough respective books Type of Book Percentage of number of customers that purchased the book (%) Arts Florence 4% Related Purchase 24% Italian Arts Review 0% Italian Arts 0% Italian Cooking Books 8% Geography Books 16% Reference Books 0% Do-it-yourself Books 8% Cook Books 16% Youth Books 4% Child Books 20% Total 25 ii. Corresponding Pie-Chart to the Number of Customers that Purchased specific books ID # ML FE M R F FP CB YB CkB DYB RB GB IC IA IAr FL RP TOTAL 1 ML 128 8 2 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 128 2 ML 135 14 1 14 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 135 3 ML 81 22 1 22 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 81 4 FE 63 4 1 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 63 5 FE 57 2 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 57 6 FE 32 26 32 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 32 7 FE 33 12 1 12 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 33 8 ML 32 14 1 14 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 32 9 FE 78 6 2 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 78 10 ML 49 22 3 32 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 49 11 ML 43 24 2 26 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 43 12 ML 123 12 16 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 123 13 FE 49 10 2 14 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 49 14 ML 64 6 2 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 64 15 ML 95 2 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 95 16 ML 123 14 4 32 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 123 17 FE 75 14 1 14 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 75 18 FE 31 6 1 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 31 19 ML 74 32 2 36 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 74 TOT 11 8 1365 5 1 4 2 0 4 2 0 0 1 6 Figure 1. Raw Data from the Sampling process In the figure above, the following are the meanings of the abbreviation signs used: ID# refers to Identification of a customer by customer number ML refers to male customer FE refers to female customers M refers to total monetary value spent on the books R refers to the months since the previous purchase F refers to the number of times a customer has purchased from the company FP refers to months since the first purchase CB refers to the number of purchases from the category of child books YB refers to the number of purchases from the category of youth books Ck B refers to the number of purchases from the category of cook books DYB refers to the number of purchases from the category of do-it-yourself books RF refers to the number of purchases from the category of reference books such as atlases, encyclopedias and dictionaries GB refers to purchases from the category of geography books IC refers to purchases from the category of Italian cooking IA refers to purchases from Historical Arts of History IAr refers to purchases made on the book title Italian arts Review F refers to the number of purchases of the book entitled, the Art History of Florence Read More