BUS 520 Trident University International Business Analytics & Decision Making Essay
Module 1 - CaseEXCEL, DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS, AND VISUAL DISPLAYSAssignment OverviewYou are a consultant who works for the Diligent Consulting Group. In this Case, you are engaged on a consulting basis by Loving Organic Foods. In order to get a better idea of what might have motivated customers’ buying habits you are asked to analyze the ages of the customers who have purchased organic foods over the past 3 months. Past research done by the Diligent Consulting Group has shown that different age groups buy certain products for different reasons. Loving Organic Foods has sent a survey to 200 customers who have previously purchased organic foods, and 124 customers have responded. The survey includes age data of past customers who purchased organic foods in the previous quarter.Case AssignmentUsing Excel, create a frequency distribution (histogram) of the age data that was captured from the survey. You should consider the width of the age categories (e.g., 5 years, 10 years, or other). That is, which age category grouping provides the most useful information? Once you have created this histogram, determine the mean, median, and mode.After you have reviewed the data, write a report to your boss that briefly describes the results that you obtained. Make a recommendation on how this data might be used for marketing purposes. Be sure to conduct adequate research on organic foods industry, organic market analysis, and healthy food industry using IBISWorld database or other databases such as Business Source Complete (EBSCO) and Business Source Complete - Business Searching Interface in our online library. Provide a brief description on the industry background and the consumer changing attitudes and behavior toward healthy lifestyles. Also identify the customer demographics of organic food industry and explain how the customers of Loving Organic Foods are different from this target market.Data: Download the Excel-based data file with the age data of the 124 customers: Data chart for BUS520 Module 1 Case. Use these data in Excel to create your histogram.Need help? Watch the following step-by-step video that works through this Case Assignment. (It takes the picture a few seconds to start.)Assignment ExpectationsExcel AnalysisComplete analysis in Excel using the Histogram function. Please watch the following video which covers how to create a histogram in Excel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL91GrVf3EYIf you are not so familiar with Excel, refer to the following link on Excel training videos: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Excel-training-9bc05390-e94c-46af-a5b3-d7c22f6990bb?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=USCheck the professional market research reports from the IBISWorld database to conduct the industry analysis. IBISWorld can be accessed in the Trident Online Library.IBISWorld Overview (n.d.). IBISWorld, Inc., New York, NY.IBISWorld Forecast (n.d.). IBISWorld, Inc., New York, NY.IBISWorld Data and Sources (n.d.). IBISWorld, Inc., New York, NY.IBISWorld Navigation Tips (n.d.). IBISWorld, Inc., New York, NY.Written ReportLength requirements: 4–5 pages minimum (not including Cover and Reference pages). NOTE: You must submit 4–5 pages of written discussion and analysis. This means that you should avoid use of tables and charts as “space fillers.”Provide a brief introduction to/background of the problem.Provide a brief description of organic food industry and target market characteristics such as their demographics, lifestyles and shopping behaviors.Provide a written analysis that supports your Histogram age groups (bins). Based on your analysis of the histogram data, provide complete and meaningful recommendations as the data relates to Loving Organic Foods’s marketing strategy.Write clearly, simply, and logically. Use double-spaced, black Verdana or Times Roman font in 12 pt. type size.Have an introduction at the beginning to introduce the topics and use keywords as headings to organize the report.Avoid redundancy and general statements such as "All organizations exist to make a profit." Make every sentence count.Paraphrase the facts using your own words and ideas, employing quotes sparingly. Quotes, if absolutely necessary, should rarely exceed five words.Upload both your written report and Excel file to the case 1 Dropbox.Module 1 - BackgroundEXCEL, DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS, AND VISUAL DISPLAYSRequired ReadingStatistics are all around you, sometimes used well, sometimes not. We must learn how to distinguish the two cases. Just as important as detecting the deceptive use of statistics is the appreciation of the proper use of statistics. You must also learn to recognize statistical evidence that supports a stated conclusion. When a research team is testing a new treatment for a disease, statistics allows them to conclude based on a relatively small trial that there is good evidence their drug is effective. Therefore, it is important to understand statistics. In this course, you would reform your statistical habits from now on. No longer will you blindly accept numbers or findings. Instead, you will begin to think about the numbers, their sources, and most importantly, the procedures used to generate them. In this way, you can become a more rational decision maker by analyzing the past performance to make business planning.Statistics are often presented in an effort to add credibility to an argument or advice. You can see this by paying attention to television advertisements. Many of the numbers thrown about in this way do not represent careful statistical analysis. They can be misleading, and push you into decisions that you might find cause to regret. If you cannot distinguish good from faulty reasoning, then you are vulnerable to manipulation and to decisions that are not in your best interest. Statistics provides tools that you need in order to react intelligently to information you hear or read. In this sense, statistics is one of the most important things that you can study. For these reasons, learning about statistics is essential to business intelligence. This course will help you refresh some statistical essentials that are related to business analytics and decision making.The primary resource for this module is Introductory Business Statistics, by Alexander, Illowsky, and Dean.Alexander, H., Illowsky, B., & Dean, S. (2017). Introductory Business Statistics. Openstax. Retrieved from https://openstax.org/details/books/introductory-business-statisticsFor Module 1, you should read through the following material in this textbook:Chapter 1: Sampling and DataThis chapter provides a general overview of statistics, data terminology, and sampling techniques.Chapter 2: Descriptive StatisticsThis chapter explains measures of central tendency, including mean, median, and mode. It also carefully discusses statistics that measure variation, including variance and standard deviation and covers important concepts such as skewness.As mentioned in the overview, it is very important that you become comfortable with Microsoft Excel. This course, along with many others in the graduate program, uses Excel extensively. It is also very likely that you will use Excel in the workplace. Below are important videos that will help you get started with some of the basics.If you have never used Excel before, you will benefit from working through these tutorials:https://support.office.com/en-us/article/excel-for-windows-training-9bc05390-e94c-46af-a5b3-d7c22f6990bbIf you have used Excel before and are comfortable with entering data and working with the dropdown menus, you can start by ensuring you have the Analysis Toolpak add-in, which will allow you to quickly generate many of the statistics we will discuss during this course:https://support.office.com/en-us/article/load-the-analysis-toolpak-in-excel-6a63e598-cd6d-42e3-9317-6b40ba1a66b4Once the Analysis Toolpak is added, you will be working with the Descriptive Statistics tool. Please read through the following instructions for help in using this feature:https://www.excel-easy.com/examples/descriptive-statistics.html