Assignment

The Case Study & Tasks

Grack's is a chocolate and bakery company based in the UK. They have been operating very successfully in the snacks industry for many years. Catering for consumers' needs and demand is the key to their success and sustainability. They collect consumer data on a regular basis and analyse it to identify the growing trend in snacks consumption.

Recently they have identified that the British population is increasingly choosing healthier snacks with low sugar content. They have also established that this is strongly correlated with an Olympic spirit. To exploit this new trend Grack's is planning to launch a new product after the success of ‘Team GB' at the Brazil Summer Olympics. Grack's innovation and product design team plan to market a chocolate bar for keeping weight under control, with average calories of 193 per unit.

Grack's has hired you for your analytical insights. Your job is to collate and analyse a range of data to recommend a competitive product for the healthy snack food market. See Excel file "CW2 Raw Data.xls" for raw data.

Task 1:

Using the food table in the dataset provided, prepare a list of alternative snacks i.e. direct competitors to the new product. You are required to:

1. Sort, list & appropriately format the dataset into appropriate categories related to food groups e.g. chocolate-based snacks, baked food, processed food, fast food, healthier snacks etc.

2. Prepare appropriate graphs displaying & comparing calories, of the categories.

3. Calculate summary statistics such as the mean, median and standard deviations of the categories.

4. Give a brief critical discussion of the summary statistics from part 3.

5. What advice would you give for weight-loss purposes - which snacks have to be chosen? Is the chocolate bar going to be competitive in the market?

Task 2:

Using the attached sugar content data, "Sugar Content - British Dental Society", and internet sources, try to determine the average content of sugar of the items in the chocolate bar categories you have selected in Task 1, that are in the sugar data, and list them in a new column near the calories. After that, you need to:

1. Construct the appropriate graph(s) for the new variable, sugar.

2. Calculate the mean and median of the new variable, and their standard deviations.

3. Give a brief critical discussion of the summary statistics from part 2.

4. Generate the scatterplot and calculate the Pearson's coefficient for the two variables (calories and sugar); for the chocolate bar category.

5. Provide comments about the results (hint: it is about the correlation).

Task 3:

Grack's is now interested in trying to estimate how sales are influenced by the price of their products. To do this, the company randomly chooses 9 UK cities and offers the candy bar at different prices and run a regression analysis on price and sales data.

City               Price (£)    Sales
London            1.46         92
Birmingham      2.70         83
Manchester       2.60         62
Derby              2.00          80
Edinburgh        3.70          53
Glasgow           4.00          45
Cardiff              3.00          57
Belfast              4.50          23
Leicester           3.20          60

1. Using sales as the dependent variable, conduct linear regression analysis*.

2. Generate the scatterplot.

3. Write the regression equation using the results of the excel table.

4. Determine & interpret the slope and the intercept.

5. Determine what percentage of the total variation in candy bar sales is explained by prices?

*[Perform, using Excel, Data Analysis Pack, Regression function, the regression analysis.]

Task 4:

Write a summary report based on the results of the three tasks above.

Attachment:- Data.rar