Assignment Task - BA 1510 - Quantitative Methods Coursework Assignment - University of London

Coursework (I)

Three years ago, two college business graduates Jane (majored in Finance) and Thomas (majored in Management) came together with a new restaurant concept for an Italian theme casual dining experience, calling it the Boilerhouse Cafe. The restaurant served a variety of fresh food items in a friendly family-oriented atmosphere.

After 2 years of success, Jane and Thomas noticed that revenues, traffic flow, and sales were declining and realized that they knew only the basics about their customers. Neither of the owners had taken any marketing courses beyond the basic marketing content covered during their degrees. The pair turned to a friend who advised them to hire a marketing research firm to collect some primary data about their customers` dining out habits and patterns. A marketing research company was identified and contracted to design a self-administered survey to collect the needed data. 450 respondents completed the survey, of which 167 most recently dined at Prezzo (main competitor) and 283 at the Boilerhouse Cafe. The data for the survey is available in Excel (see attached). The survey included questions about lifestyle, the importance of various reasons in choosing a restaurant, perceptions of the images of the two restaurants on the same attributes, relationship measures, and selected classification information on the respondents (A copy of the questionnaire can be found in the ‘Coursework Guidance’ folder).

Coursework (II)

The following 6 research objectives were used to guide the design of the survey:

1. To identify the factors people consider important in making casual dining restaurant choice decisions.
2. To determine the characteristics customers use to describe the Boilerhouse Cafe and its competitor Prezzo.
3. To develop a psychographic/demographic profile of the restaurant customers.
4. To determine the patronage and positive word-of-mouth advertising patterns of the restaurant customers.
5. To assess the customer’s willingness to return to the restaurant in the future.
6. To assess the degree to which customers are satisfied with their Italian restaurant experiences.

Requirements

Analyse the data (see dataset in Coursework folder) using appropriate statistical techniques. Prepare a report addressing the questions above as raised by the owner of Boilerhouse Cafe. Your report should i) assess whether the perceptions of each restaurant are similar or different; ii) identify Boilerhouse Cafe`s competitive advantages; iii) address areas for improvement; and iv) provide recommendations (e.g., new marketing strategies). Using Excel, your analysis should include frequencies, mean, and standard deviation for the variables as appropriate. In addition, use relevant charts to present and summarize data. For group comparisons, run t-tests and ANOVA and to examine linear relationships between variables, perform correlation and regression analyses.

Discussions and Implications

Discuss the managerial/practical implications of the main findings. Recommendations should be based on key findings and should be realistic. Develop/formulate/recommend relevant strategies or tactics.

Common Problems to Avoid (I)

1. Failing to adequately address the requirements of the coursework; need to compare the 2 restaurants on relevant attributes (e.g., perceptions, relationship measures).
2. Lack of Data Interpretation: failure to adequately report and interpret data; unbiased interpretation of findings is required. For example, not significant findings ≠ not important to report; you should explain why the results are not significant in the report.
3. Lack of Relevance: Reporting data, statistics, and information that are not consistent with the study’s objectives; develop the report with the research objectives clearly in focus; don’t over-rely on descriptive statistics (such as frequencies, percentages, mean, and standard deviation).
4. Placing too much emphasis on a few statistics: Don’t base your implications/recommendations solely on statistical results, but on the pattern of results in your entire report; need to demonstrate knowledge of various approaches to analyse quantitative data (e.g., descriptive analysis, t-test, correlation, multiple regression).
5. Failing to discuss the implications for the owners [and to some extent theoretical implications] of key findings and this is a key requirement for this coursework; need to provide supporting evidence for any recommendations; recommendations/implications should relate to main findings.
6. Too much emphasis on analysis; while it is important to demonstrate familiarity with the various techniques to analyse data; reports should focus on the interpretation, relevance, and implications of key analysis.
7. Failing to include raw Excel outputs in Appendix.
8. It is a requirement to use Excel to analyse data and not other software (such as SPSS). Learning Excel is part of the transferable skills offered by this module.