Assessment 2–Individual Assignment

STA101 – Statistics for Business

Total Marks: This assignment is worth 35marks (35 % of the total marks in the unit).

Instructions:

• Students are required to cover all stated requirements.

• Your answer must be both uploaded to Moodle in word file and handed over a printed copy.

• You need to support your answers with appropriate Harvard style references where necessary.

• Include a title/cover page containing the subject title and code and the name, student id numbers.

• Please save the document as STA101AT1_first name_Surname_Student Number Eg:STA101AT1_John_Smith_NA20170000

As abusiness analyst, you work in a large personal care company Boween Pty Ltd. You are required to conduct a research and write a report to your departmentsupervisor. You report needs to include the following focus:

1. Give a brief introduction of the firm provided, including basic background information and issues to address.
2. How much sales do you expect to generate in the overseas market in the 2^nd quarter of 2020based on the least squares line? In your work, you need to include your excel calculation for covariance, correlation coefficient between selling expense and sales as well as a plotted scatter diagram. Briefly comment on the relationship between selling expense and sales.
3. The company wants to find out whether the consumer will consume more than 7bottles of liquid hand wash in the next quarter. Identify an appropriate statistical test and hypothesis, carrying out your analysis using a significance level of  =0.05.Show details of your work.
4. Provide a sales forecast report for 2^nd half of 2020 based on your analysis from the data provided and your revised estimate of the probabilities of each scenario that is based on the new market information.

Your assignment should follow below structure

1. Introduction

1. Firm Background
2. Issues to address

2. Statistical methods chosen and Data analysis
   1. Prediction on overseas 2^nd quarter sales based on least square method
   2. What methods were used, why, and prediction on domestic 2^nd quarter sales in hypothesis testing using  =0.05
   3. Prediction on domestic 2nd half sales based on the scenario analysis and probability.

3. Conclusion and recommendation

Marks will be allocated as follows:

Introduction, assignment presentation and excel workings(incorporated into the Word report)(10%)

• Well planned structure.
• The student’s essay uses correct grammar and sentence structure.
• The introduction clearly outlines the objective of the essay (what the student is going to do) while the conclusion reiterates the objective and summarises their argument/position.
• All the workings are done via Excel clearly with all the formula and diagram incorporated into the report.

Details of the data analysis, Your assessment (60%)

• Calculations are done via Excel and all the calculations must be clear and sufficient
  • There is a relevant discussion on different parameters and methods used.
  • Hypothesis testing has been conducted and explained clearly with supporting calculation provided

Conclusion and recommendation (30%)

• The student’s arguments are logical and consistent.A clear, consistent argument is presented which addresses the student’s perspective/position in relation to the proposed 3 scenarios., including the reasons for modifying the probabilities and any new recommendations.
• Conclusion is made based on correct calculations.
• Calculations are correct and clear

Case Details

BoweenPty Ltd is a personal care company, and the key product is liquid hand wash product. The company sells its products both domestically and internationally. Due to the outbreak of the coronavirus globally, consumers tend to wash hands more often recently, which lead to a temporary shortage of the product in the market. Thus, the managementdecided to run the factory into full capacity in order to meet demand in both local and overseasmarket.

The sales manager has collected overseas sales data for the past 8 weeks, the total selling expensevs. the sales were recorded below. The manager expects the selling expense would be stable at around $23,000 each week in the 2^nd quarter and use this as the base assumption to estimate the sales for the foreign business.

The company wants to have a better understanding of how the consumption looks like in the next quarter in Australia, so they did the survey for a sample of 100 target households asking about ‘how many bottles of liquid hand wash would a household consume in the next quarter’. The survey data is attached in the excel. Given that the consumption for liquid hand wash is normally distributed with a standard deviation of 5.

Given the current situation is quite tough, the company also wants the sales department to forecast the sales for the second half of this year. Then the sales department did a scenario analysis as below:

Scenario 1: The outbreak will not get better until the end of the year, so they expect sales will increase by20% in the 2^nd half of this year vs. 1^sthalf of 2020.

Scenario 2: The market is not getting worse further, sales in the 2^nd half of this year will be similar to the 1^st half of 2020.

Scenario 3: The vaccine or medicine will be on the market soon and people will return to normal usage level, which is down by -25% in 2^nd half compared to the 1^st half of 2020.

After the discussion, management thinks the probability of scenario 1 is about 20%, probability of scenario 2 is 30% and probability of scenario 3 is 50%. 1^st half of 2020 sales are expected to be AU$20mn.

As a business analyst, however, based on your recent shop visits and the market news, you disagree with the probability of the above. On the back of your findings and analysis of the market, you adjust the probabilities of each scenario and make a new suggestion to the management team.