JUNE 2013 EXAMINATION DGM07 Research Methodology Time: Three Hours Maximum Marks: 100

Note: 1. 2. 3. 1. The paper is divided in two sections: Section-A and Section-B There are five questions in Section-A. Students are required to attempt any three. Each question in Section-A carries 20 marks. Section-B is compulsory. It carries 40 marks.

SECTION-A a. Briefly discuss the difference between a decision problem and a research problem. b. Given the following decision problems, identify the research problems: (i) What pricing strategy to follow for a new product. (ii) Whether to increase the level of advertising expenditures on print or online. (iii) Whether to increase in-store promotion of existing products. (iv) Whether to increase training for frontline service providers. 2. a. What are the different types of research designs? What is the basic purpose of each. b. Getting & Gettings, a father-and-son insurance agency in a city was concerned with improving its service. In particular, the firm wanted to assess whether customers were dissatisfied with current service and, if so, the nature of this dissatisfaction. What research design would you recommend? Justify your choice.

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3. a. What criteria can be employed to judge the accuracy of secondary data? b. Cardworth is a national manufacturer and distributor of greetings cards. The company recently began distributing a lower-priced line of cards that was made possible by using re-cycled paper. Quality differences between the higher and lower priced cards did not seem to be noticeable to lay people. The company followed a policy of printing its name and the price on the back of each card. The initial acceptance of the new line of cards convinced the vice-president of production that the company should use recycled paper for all its cards and increase its profit margin from 12.3% to 14.9%. the sales manager has strongly opposed this move and commented. You know, consumers are concerned about the quality of greeting cards; a price difference of five cents on a card does not matter. You are required to undertake a study to see if this really did matter for the customers of the firm. Discuss the type of study and the method you would use to collect information for the same. 4. a. Discuss the process of constructing a Likert summated rating scale. b. Discuss the difference between Comparative and Noncomparative scaling techniques. 5. a. The transit system of a major metropolitan area was interested in determining the average number of miles a commuter drives to work. Past studies have shown that the standard deviation in commuting distances was 5 miles. The mangers of the transit system want to be 95% confident in the result and do not want the error to exceed 0.75 mile. What sample size would you recommend. (consider Z = 1.96) b. The Nevada National Bank, headquartered in Las Vegas, has some 4,00,000 users of its credit card scattered throughout the state. The application forms for the credit card ask for the usual information about name, address, phone, income, education and so on that is typical of such applications. The bank is interested in determining if there is any relationship between the uses of the card and the socio-economic characteristics of the user; e.g. is there a difference in the characteristics of those people who use Page 2/4

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the credit card for major purchases only and those who use it for minor as well as major purchases. (i) Identify the population and sample frame that would be used by the bank. (ii) Indicate how you would draw a simple random sample from the sampling frame identified above? (iii) Indicate how would you draw a stratified sample from the sampling frame? (iv) Indicate how would you draw a cluster sample from the sampling frame? (v) Which method would be preferred? Why? SECTION-B Case Study (Compulsory) An automobile consultancy organization was researching on the cost of repair between the different types of automobiles for which they chose three different models of automobiles. They also felt the cost of repair was also dependent on the type of crash that the vehicle is subjected to The three models are referred to as Model 1, Model -2

and Model-3 and the type of crash are head on , slant, and rear end. Based on the data collected the results were analyzed using SPSS and results are given below:
Tests of Between-Subjects Effects Dependent Variable: cost of repair Type III Sum of Source Squares df Mean Square Model 1985985.185 2 992992.593 Crash 1120029.630 2 560014.815 model * 216637.037 4 54159.259 crash Error 1619400.000 18 89966.667 Total 4942051.852 26 Multiple Comparisons Dependent Variable: cost of repair (I) model of (J) model of vehicle vehicle Tukey model -1 model 2 HSD model -3 model - model -1 2

F 11.037 6.225 .602

Sig. .001 .009 .666

Mean Difference (I-J) -395.5556(*) -660.0000(*) 395.5556(*)

Std. Error 141.39516 141.39516 141.39516

Sig. .030 .001 .030

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model -3 -264.4444 model -3 model -1 660.0000(*) model 2 264.4444 LSD model -1 model 2 -395.5556(*) model -3 -660.0000(*) model - model -1 395.5556(*) 2 model -3 -264.4444 model -3 model -1 660.0000(*) model 2 264.4444 Based on observed means. * The mean difference is significant at the .05 level. Multiple Comparisons Dependent Variable: level. (I) type of crash head-on Slant rear end

141.39516 141.39516 141.39516 141.39516 141.39516 141.39516 141.39516 141.39516 141.39516

.176 .001 .176 .012 .000 .012 .078 .000 .078

(*) The mean difference is significant at the .05 (J) type of crash Slant rear end head-on rear end head-on Slant Mean Difference (I-J) -220.0000 277.7778 220.0000 497.7778(*) -277.7778 -497.7778(*)

Std. Error 141.39516 141.39516 141.39516 141.39516 141.39516 141.39516

Sig. .290 .150 .290 .007 .150 .007

Tukey HSD

Levene's Test of Equality of Error Variances Dependent Variable: cost of repair F df1 df2 Sig. 1.263 8 18 .322 Tests of Normality type of Kolmogorov-Smirnov(a) crash Statistic df Sig. cost of head-on .263 9 .074 repair slant .159 9 .200(*) rear end .172 9 .200(*) * This is a lower bound of the true significance. a Lilliefors Significance Correction Tests of Normality Kolmogorov-Smirnov(a) model of vehicle Statistic df Sig. of model -1 .163 9 .200(*) model - 2 .294 9 .024

Shapiro-Wilk Statistic df .891 9 .948 9 .921 9

Sig. .203 .666 .405

cost repair

Shapiro-Wilk Statistic df .938 9 .796 9

Sig. .556 .018

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model -3 .231 9 .184 * This is a lower bound of the true significance. a Lilliefors Significance Correction

.935

.532

Questions: 6. Based on the above outputs answer the following: a. Analyse if the crash cost is dependent on the model of the vehicle and type of crash. Write the appropriate Null and Alternative hypothesis for each case and discuss the result. Use 5% level of significance. Discuss the multiple comparison table indicated above and your observations. If the research question was whether cost of repair was dependent on the type of crash and had used one way ANOVA what would have been your conclusion. Use 1% level of significance. (Table value 5.61). Do you think it would have the correct way to analyse. Do you think that Analysis of variance technique is appropriate for this analysis based on the output shown above. Give reasons.

b. c.

d.

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