Introduction
What is statistics ?
Set of scientific methods aimed at collecting, organizing, presenting, modelling data and constructing numerical summaries.
Statistics:
- Numerical
data (e.g. consumption of French
households)
- Non-numerical
data (e.g. marital situation)
Measures of central tendency
Central tendency describes the tendency of the observations to bunch around a particular value or category
Three ways:
- Mean
(average)
- Median
(middle value)
- Mode
(most frequent value)
Mean
MEAN = AVERAGE
Add up all the numbers and divide by how many numbers there are
Formula:
Median
MEDIAN = MIDDLE VALUE
Put the numbers in ascending order and find the middle value. If there are two middle values, take the average of the two.
Formula:
Mode
MODE = MOST FREQUENT VALUE
Measures of dispersion
Dispersion describes the spread of the observations around the central tendency
Three ways:
- Range
(difference between the largest and smallest values)
-
Variance (average of the squared deviations from
the mean)
- Standard
deviation (square root of the variance)
Range
RANGE = DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE LARGEST AND SMALLEST VALUES
Shows distributions of dataset with lowest and highest limits.
Formula:
Variance
VARIANCE = AVERAGE OF THE SQUARED DEVIATIONS FROM THE MEAN
Shows how far the numbers are spread out from their average value.
Formula:
Standard deviation
STANDARD DEVIATION = SQUARE ROOT OF THE VARIANCE
Formula:
What is Market Research ?
Systematic and objective identification , collection, analysis and interpretation of data to develop marketing strategy or solve a market problem.
- Allows company to discover target market
- Links consumer with marketer (marketing decisions)
- Get feedback/opinion from customers
- In-house or by third-party companies
Uses
- Identify market opportunities and problems
- Evaluate potential market actions
- Monitor marketing performance
- Help understand customer behaviour
Tools
- Surveys (questionnaires, interviews)
- Product testing
- Focus groups (observations, experiments)
Types of Research
Basic Research
- Verify an existing theory or learn more about a concept or phenomenon - Not aimed at solving a particular pragmatic problem
Applied Research
- Conducted when a decision must be made about a specific real-life problem - Studies are designed to solve practical problems of the modern world
Marketing Research Process
Step 1: Identify and define the problem
- Starts with problem discovery
- Find something that has gone wrong
- Gap between what actual and ideal situation (what should have happened and what actually happened)
- Low grades of students in mathematics - Decrease in company's sales - Preference of mode of transport - High rate of employee turnover - Low wages of workers
Step 2: Set objectives
- What do you want to achieve?
- What do you want to learn?
- What do you want to know?
- Figuring out the impact of studying hours on grades - Finding the impact of discounts on sales volume - Role of gender in choosing career paths
Research Method
- Exploratory
- Descriptive
- Casual research
"The objectives of the study, the available data sources, the urgency of the decision and the cost of obtaining the data will determine which method should be chosen."
Surveys
- Most common method of descriptive research
- data from sample using a questionnaire
- writing questions, selecting sample, collecting data, analyzing data
Population vs Sample
Population = entire group.
Sample = subset of population. Sampling = process of selecting a subset of population.
For a good sampling we need:
- who is to be sampled ?
- how large a sample is needed ?
- how sampling units will be selected ?
A good sample should have the same characteristics as the population.
Last updated on 8/30/2024