Question

Scenario Background:

A marketing company based out of New York City is doing well and is looking to expand internationally. The CEO and VP of Operations decide to enlist the help of a consulting firm that you work for, to help collect data and analyze market trends.  

You work for Mercer Human Resources. The Mercer Human Resource Consulting website (www.mercer.com) lists the prices of certain items in selected cities around the world. They also report an overall cost-of-living index for each city compared to the costs of hundreds of items in New York City (NYC). For example, in London at 88.33 is 11.67% less expensive than NYC.

More specifically, if you choose to explore the website further you will find a lot of fun and interesting data. You can explore the website more on your own after the course concludes.

https://mobilityexchange.mercer.com/Insights/cost-of-living-rankings#rankings

In the Excel document, you will find the 2018 data for 17 cities in the data set Cost of Living. Included are the 2018 cost of living index, cost of a 3-bedroom apartment (per month), price of monthly transportation pass, price of a mid-range bottle of wine, price of a loaf of bread (1 lb.), the price of a gallon of milk and price for a 12 oz. cup of black coffee. All prices are in U.S. dollars.

You use this information to run a Multiple Linear Regression to predict the Cost of living, along with calculating various descriptive statistics. This is given in the Excel output (that is, the MLR has already been calculated. Your task is to interpret the data).  

Based on this information, in which city should you open a second office in? You must justify your answer. If you want to recommend 2 or 3 different cities and rank them based on the data and your findings, this is fine as well.  

City	Cost of Living Index	Rent (in City Centre)	Monthly Pubic Trans Pass	Loaf of Bread	Milk	Bottle of Wine (mid-range)	Coffee
Mumbai	31.74	$1,642.68	$7.66	$0.41	$2.93	$10.73	$1.63
Prague	50.95	$1,240.48	$25.01	$0.92	$3.14	$5.46	$2.17
Warsaw	45.45	$1,060.06	$30.09	$0.69	$2.68	$6.84	$1.98
Athens	63.06	$569.12	$35.31	$0.80	$5.35	$8.24	$2.88
Rome	78.19	$2,354.10	$41.20	$1.38	$6.82	$7.06	$1.51
Seoul	83.45	$2,370.81	$50.53	$2.44	$7.90	$17.57	$1.79
Brussels	82.2	$1,734.75	$57.68	$1.66	$4.17	$8.24	$1.51
Madrid	66.75	$1,795.10	$64.27	$1.04	$3.63	$5.89	$1.58
Vancouver	74.06	$2,937.27	$74.28	$2.28	$7.12	$14.38	$1.47
Paris	89.94	$2,701.61	$85.92	$1.56	$4.68	$8.24	$1.51
Tokyo	92.94	$2,197.03	$88.77	$1.77	$6.46	$17.75	$1.49
Berlin	71.65	$1,695.77	$95.34	$1.24	$3.52	$5.89	$1.71
Amsterdam	85.9	$2,823.28	$105.93	$1.33	$4.34	$7.06	$1.71
New York	100	$5,877.45	$121.00	$2.93	$3.98	$15.00	$0.84
Sydney	90.78	$3,777.72	$124.55	$1.94	$4.43	$14.01	$2.26
Dublin	87.93	$3,025.83	$144.78	$1.37	$4.31	$14.12	$2.06
London	88.33	$4,069.99	$173.81	$1.23	$4.63	$10.53	$1.90
mean	75.49	$2,463.12	$78.01	$1.47	$4.71	$10.41	$1.76
median	82.2	$2,354.10	$74.28	$1.37	$4.34	$8.24	$1.71
min	31.74	$569.12	$7.66	$0.41	$2.68	$5.46	$0.84
max	100	$5,877.45	$173.81	$2.93	$7.90	$17.75	$2.88
Q1	66.75	$1,695.77	$41.20	$1.04	$3.63	$7.06	$1.51
Q3	88.33	$2,937.27	$105.93	$1.77	$5.35	$14.12	$1.98
New York	100	$5,877.45	$121.00	$2.93	$3.98	$15.00	$0.84

Answer 1