Sampling issues in Business Statistics

Thèmes abordés

Nespresso - Coffee - Marketing - Audit - Patent - Competition

Résumé du document

Data collection is an essential part of the decision making process. In order to avoid subjective variables in the process, it is essential to gather objective information on which the decision will be based on. Sampling is one of the methods that enable to collect data. The aim of this method is to yield some knowledge about the population, by the decision made. For instance, when launching a new advertising campaign, a company needs to gather information on its customers' buying habits, consuming motivators and so on. Sampling is consequently a way to study a smaller, representative sample of the population to gather information. By definition, sampling is "the process of selecting units (e.g., people, organizations) from a population of interest so that by studying the sample we may fairly generalize our results back to the population from which they were chosen."

In this report, we will focus on the key issues regarding "sampling" in the managers' decision making process. After analyzing the different sample selection techniques, we will study the way business managers design strong samples statistically that can be used for multiple purposes. Finally, we will evaluate the way business managers adjust the sample designs so that the samples remain representative as organizational characteristics change over time.

The purpose of this report is to explain how sampling can be used as a reliable tool in the decision making process, even though this process can be endangered by managers' subjectivity and the environmental changes.

Extraits

[...] Analyzing the environment, understanding the issues, and gathering information is a fundamental step to make wise decisions. The purpose of data collection is consequently to obtain information to keep on record in order to gather a satisfying amount of data collected in databases. Resorting to samples to make decisions is a key step of the process, since analyzing the whole population would be too much resource-consuming. In order to get the trend, business managers therefore design samples to test their hypotheses, assuming that they will be able to generalize results to the overall population. [...]

[...] - What is the purpose of the sampling process? Being aware of possible biases and avoid them - Share experiences with fellow workers - Always keep in mind that objectivity is an essential part of the process - Work in team with regular briefs To sum up, when selecting a sample with a sampling technique, managers have to formalize the objectives of the sampling process, to put away personal values, subjectivity and principles, and to objectively stick to the research's context and goals. [...]

[...] Then, a sample of units is randomly selected inside each cluster. Consequently, instead of measuring all units of the cluster (as we do in the cluster sampling equently, method), here we resort to a second a third, a fourth (and so on) selection inside the cluster second, to select units. Those units (for instance individuals) will be survey surveyed. + - enables to achieve a rich ables variety of probabilistic sampling methods that can be used in a wide range of social research contexts. [...]

[...] + - Provides illustrative examples or case studies in very specific situations 8 - Very prone to bias - Impossible to representatively extrapolate from the sample 2. The way business managers design statistically strong samples that can be used for multiple purposes 2.1 Choosing the most statistically strong sampling method Among all the sampling methods we analyzed in the first question, it is obvious that some of those are statistically stronger than others. Managers have to select a technique according to their resources (money, people, time) in order to get the most satisfying result. [...]

[...] Elsa Pairaud Seminar #11 Business Statistics Paris - 2E - December 03- Seminar Instructor: Pr Dorothy L. McAleer Sampling issues in Business Statistics Essay TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction . page Different sample selection techniques . page The way business managers design statistically strong samples . page The way business managers adjust sample designs . page 11 Conclusion . page 13 References . page INTRODUCTION Data collection is an essential part of decision making process. [...]