Question

Consider the following data set from a small convenience store:

Day of the Week	# of Customers	Sales
Monday	15	$239.85
Tuesday	18	$287.82
Wednesday	39	$506.61
Thursday	27	$431.73
Friday	42	$351.78

What methods might you use to analyze this data?   

What kinds of information could you give the business owner based on this information?

What kinds of decisions might the business owner be able to make using your analysis?

Answer 1

The methods used to analyse this could be scatter plots between the number of customers and sales for each day. Also a line of fit which is known as R²will help us to understand how much the sales deviate from the mean value. We can also find the confidence intervals of the data which will help in forecasting data of the weeks ahead. Additionally we can also check for the sales per head on each day which will show interesting results(given below).

The information that can be provided to the business owner is that the number of customers is minimum when the week starts and maximum when the week ends on Friday. But interestingly the highest sales is on Wednesday. This is because the combination of number of customers and purchases made is maximised. This may also be due to some offer that is available on Wednesdays which sees a sudden influx of customers.

The business owner can stock supplies as per the requirement pattern which is clearly fluctuating as the week progresses. The owner can provide additional discounts especially on Monday to ensure that more customers are attracted to the market. Or on the contrary the owner can adjust the staff and employ more people only on peak days from Wdnesday to Friday. This might help him to get more profits by reducing cost of operation.