6. Major project: Call of the Furniture Store
Purpose
The idea is of this assignment is to simulate a professional work
task involving statistical analysis. It is
designed to help students learn about what is involved in
undertaking basic statistical analysis to
understand a real‐world problem, and communicating the results
of this analysis to business stakeholders.
Context and Problem
You are working as a consultant for Big 4 Consultants Australia
(“B4CA”), a Sydney‐based company that
specializes in providing statistical consulting services to Austra
lian companies seeking intelligence about
their present or potential customers. Your company is contacte
d by Wooden Furniture Inc. (hereinafter
called “Store”) an owner of several furniture stores in Sydney. I
t sells two types of furniture, wooden and
medium density fibreboard (MDF). You are told that the CEO of
the company, Jonathan Lee, is interested
in using market research to make informed expansion decisions
(i.e., decisions about what to stock, who
to target and how to market etc.).
You attend a breakfast meeting with Mr. Lee and a senior B4CA
consultant to discuss his concerns in more
detail. At the meeting, Mr. Lee says:
“So the situation is that we hired a market‐research firm to com
e in and run an intercept survey (intercept
7. survey: a survey of shoppers leaving a store) for us, which they
did, and the data were collected in a single
week in December 2016. I’m now looking for someone with stat
istical expertise to analyse the data and
give us some recommendations.
The purpose of the survey was twofold: the first objective was t
o help us understand our customers, such
as:
1.
the profile of our customers (e.g. age, gender, disposable incom
e, last renovation etc.);
2.
our customers spending habits (e.g. what they purchased?, mater
ial of the furniture, number of
items etc.);
3. how they found out about us; and
4.
the proportion of their furnishing budget dedicated to our store
purchase.
The second objective was focused on how we can improve our b
usiness and expansion opportunities; thus
we gathered data on:
1. our customer satisfaction;
2. what they wanted to see more of and what.
We hope that this will provide us with a better idea of what mig
ht do well in the store and inform expansion
decision e.g. what type of customers are purchasing the differen
t types of wood products (e.g. who is
8. 2
buying Wood and MDF?) as these products have different profit
margins. In short, we need someone to
help us crunch the numbers and provide us with a summary of fi
ndings from the survey.
The next part of the project is focused on gaining specific insig
hts about our business. In particular, I am
looking for the following:
Based on casual observation, my sense is that our biggest shopp
er segment is established adults
above 40 with a significant amounts of annual disposable incom
es i.e. with disposable incomes
between $80,001 and $100,000 per year. Can you establish whet
her this conjecture is true?
Did the majority of our customers purchase wood products rathe
r than MDF? More precisely, does
wood make up more than 50% of our total sales?
Of the customers who purchased wooden products, do they spen
d more than those who purchase
MDF products.
We’re also interested in examining ways on how we can expand
our sales e.g. what furniture and furniture
type should I be making more of (i.e. wood or mdf)? What adver
tising media should I be using? Anything
9. you can tell me about how to improve our appeal to our main sh
opper types would be great!”
Based on these comments, you and your partner draw up a consu
lting brief, which you send to Mr. Lee.
He approves it and hires you and your partner to perform the an
alysis required to address his concerns.
Mr. Lee then sends you an Excel file containing the data from th
e intercept survey.
You and your partner are given the responsibility of providing a
statistical analysis of this data and for
producing an associated report that addresses Mr. Lee’s concern
s.
Report
It is natural to associate different parts of the project work with
the coverage of relevant material in
particular Sharpe chapters and lectures. However, remember yo
u are writing a professional report, not
providing a sequence of answers to assignment problems. Thus,
you and your partner should try to write
a flowing report organized around ideas, not methods.
The report should include a brief Executive Summary. Mr. Lee,
your audience, is an intelligent person but
he is not a statistician. The Executive Summary needs to be non
‐technical so that he can assess what you
and your partner have done and understand your basic conclusio
ns. Your colleague at B4CA is familiar
with technical analysis, and will be reviewing the report before
it is sent out to the client to ensure that
the conclusions discussed in the Executive Summary are
reasonable and based on sound statistical
analysis.
10. You can see from the marking rubric below that while your proj
ect mark will be based primarily on the
substance of your statistical work, the presentation of the materi
al will also be considered. Reports should
be typed and should use appropriate graphical techniques
to represent the data, as well as other
appropriate statistical analysis. For some guidance on what or h
ow these types of reports might look like,
please check the “Project” section of Moodle where some
actual examples of statistical reports are
posted.
As is the case in any actual work environment, there is no “one
right way” to construct a report like
this, and hence there is no rigid template for what your project s
hould look like, nor is there only one
way to approach the analysis.
3
Data
Each student will be assigned a personalized data set. Each indi
vidual data set refers to the problem above
and has the same structure. However, values of some of the key
variables will vary across students,
meaning that statistical results and any inferences drawn from t
hem may differ across students. Since this
is a pairwise project, please download only one set of data using
any one of your zIDs.
In the “Project” folder on Moodle, you will find an Excel file th
11. at you and your partner will download in
order to obtain your personalized data set. Once you enter your
zID into the highlighted cell in the Excel
worksheet, a personalized data set will be generated. Copy and
paste the generated data into a new
Excel workbook, where you two will conduct your analysis. Ea
ch data set contains a sample of 293
observations, where each observation refers to a separate survey
response. There are 14 variables, and
they are as follows:
Variable Description
pid Survey response identifier
FType
Main types of furniture purchased by the respondent from the St
ore
1 = Storages
2= Entertainment
3 = Dining Tables
4 = Dining Chairs
5 = Indoor Benches
6 = Sofa and Deep Seaters
7 = Occasional Tables
8 = Desks
9 = Outdoor Set
marketing How the respondent heard about the Store:
1 = Web search
2 = Store visit
3 = Word of mouth
4 = Store Website
5 = Social media
6 = Junk mail
7 = Other
12. budget Respondent’s estimate of his/her budget for furnishing
spend Amount spent in the ‘Store’
age Respondent’s age
Dinc Total disposable income of the respondent, where:
1 = up to $20,000 per year;
2 = $20,001‐$40,000 per year;
3 = $40,001‐$60,000 per year;
4 = $60,001‐$80,000 per year;
5 = $80,001‐$100,000 per year;
6 = $100,001 or more per year.
lastreno
Number of years (rounded to nearest year) since the respondent
completed the last
renovation of his/her home
4
lastrenospend
Amount spent by the respondent on their last renovation
wood
Number of wood items purchased by the respondent from the St
ore
MDF Number of MDF items purchased from the Store
gender Gender of the respondent where:
1=male
13. 0=female
csat Respondent’s satisfaction of his/her purchase.
1 = very unhappy
2 = unhappy
3 = neutral
4 = happy
5 = very happy
PFType
Potential furniture types. This describes the main type of furnitu
re the respondent
would like to see more of:
0 = Nothing
1 = Storages
2 = Entertainment
3 = Dining Tables
4 = Dining Chairs
5 = Indoor Benches
6 = Sofa and Deep Seaters
7 = Occasional Tables
8 = Desks
9 = Outdoor Set
Tutorial work
You and your partner should think about the problem and plan
what needs to be done before you actually
start undertaking extensive computing work. In order to assist i
n this process, there will be some project
discussion time in tutorials. In particular, in your Week 7 tutori
al you and your partner will be asked to
review the problem and to discuss with other students what is re
quired by way of analysis. You should
generate your data, and then copy, paste, and save it into a new
14. Excel workbook that you bring along to
class as part of your preparation for your Week 7 tutorial. In thi
s Excel workbook, you and your partner
should take time before class to generate some descriptive statis
tics for your data that both of you can
show your tutor in Week 7. This will confirm that the both of yo
u have correctly created your data set and
that you and your partner are ready to commence your analysis.
These descriptive statistics will also be
required to answer a Week 7 tutorial question.
In your Week 9 tutorial, time will be devoted to monitoring you
r progress and discussing how more
recently covered material might be relevant to the project tasks.
Naturally the both of you should consult
your tutor or lecturer should any of you have any other question
s regarding the project.
5
Details
Length:
No longer than 1500 words, excluding tables and graphs. Total l
ength including all
discussion, tables and graphs should not exceed 12 pages.
Cover sheet:
Attach the Project Assessment sheet (given below) as your first
page. Check that
you have completed the top (grey) sections in full, including yo
15. ur signatures. Do
not use plastic sheets or binders. Simply attach the completed c
over sheet and
staple the pages together.
Project mark:
The project will be marked out of 20, and will constitute 20% of
your total course
mark.
Due date:
Only one hard copy of your assignment for you and your partner
is to be submitted
to your tutor in or before your scheduled tutorial in week 11 (be
ginning May 15).
In addition to the hard copy, you must also submit one electroni
c copy (for both
you and your partner) to the course website by 6 pm on Friday
May 19. Upload
your assignment via the Turnitin link on the course website. Bro
wse and upload a
copy of your document (only one for the both of you) ‐ do not p
aste text. Use both
of your student zIDs in the file name (e.g., z1234567&z2345678
.doc).
Late submission:
20% of the value of the project will be deducted for every day o
r part thereof that
the hard copy is turned in after the start time of your Week 11 t
utorial (including
the weekend). Projects submitted more than five days late will n
ot be marked and
will be assigned a mark of zero. You and your partner can and s
hould be working
on the material regularly before the due date. Extensions will on
16. ly be granted in
exceptional circumstances and must be approved by the lecturer
‐in‐charge. For
more details about late submission, see the Course Outline.
Plagiarism:
All assignments will be checked for plagiarism on the Turnitin s
oftware into which
they are uploaded. Therefore, you and your partner must submit
the soft copy via
Turnitin only once. Please refer to “Due Date” above for detail.
The software will
automatically check against all other projects ever
submitted. Material copied
from previous projects will be found and the source will be iden
tified. Evidence of
plagiarism will be treated extremely seriously: automatic and im
mediate failure in
the course is a possible penalty. See Part B of the course outlin
e for further details
about UNSW’s policies on plagiarism. If you are in doubt about
how to identify or
avoid plagiarism, follow the link to and complete the
self‐paced Working with
Academic Integrity module on Moodle.
Coverage:
In your work for this project, you are only expected to use the st
atistical techniques
developed in the text and lectures up until the end of week 9.
17. 6
ECON1203 Business and Economic Statistics
PROJECT ASSESSMENT
Name ___________________________________________ zID
__________________ (Member 1)
Name ___________________________________________ zID
__________________ (Member 2)
Workshop Group (Tutor, Time and Place) __________________
__________________ (Member 1)
Workshop Group (Tutor, Time and Place) __________________
__________________ (Member 2)
We declare that this assessment item is our own work except wh
ere acknowledged, and acknowledge that the assessor of
this item may, for the purpose of assessing this item:
(1) Reproduce this assessment item and provide a copy to anoth
er member of the University; and/or
(2) Communicate a copy of this assessment item to a plagiarism
checking service (which may then retain a copy of the
assessment item on its database for the purpose of future plagiar
ism checking)
We certify that we have read and understood the University Rul
es in respect of Student Academic Misconduct.
Signed ______________________________________ Date ____
_________________ (Member 1)
Signed ______________________________________ Date ____
_________________ (Member 2)
18. ANALYSIS and DISCUSSION (14 marks)
Characterizing key features of the data (7 marks)
Missing ( ) Poor ( ) Adequate ( ) Good ( ) Excellent ( )
Motivation, production and evaluation of hypotheses (3 marks)
Missing ( ) Poor ( ) Adequate ( ) Good ( ) Excellent ( )
Justification of main conclusions (2 marks)
Missing ( ) Poor ( ) Adequate ( ) Good ( ) Excellent ( )
Executive summary (2 marks)
Missing ( ) Poor ( ) Adequate ( ) Good ( ) Excellent ( )
MECHANICS (6 marks)
Presentation (3 marks)
Poor ( ) Adequate ( ) Good ( ) Excellent ( )
Use of graphics (3 marks)
Missing ( ) Poor ( ) Adequate ( ) Good ( ) Excellent ( )
Other
Some problems with spelling ( ) Poor spelling ( )
19. Some problems with grammar ( ) Poor grammar ( )
Some confused or off‐target discussion and interpretations ( )
Well argued ( )
Too long (you need to condense your argument) ( )
GENERAL COMMENTS