Unit 6 BDM in Data Collection Assignment

Program	Diploma in Business
Unit Number and Title	Unit 6 BDM in Data Collection
QFC Level	Level 5

Introduction

The business decision macking in data collection aims at developing the understanding of methods and techniques used to collect data from various sources and analyse the data after summarising it to draw valid conclusions for the business. On the basis of analysis and conclusions decisions of business are taken by the management. The business decision macking in data collection includes the research for the emerging market trends in tourism industry and the customer preferences and attitude towards the tour products of Tour Operation Company.

Task 1

Plan for data collection

Data collection refers to as the application of all those methods and techniques which are used for the collection of all the relevant data for the research from various available sources including both primary and secondary sources. The data that will be collected for the purpose of research into the subject matter which relates to development of tour products includes data about the profile of prospective customers of the outbound tour operator company, emerging market trends in the tour operations industry, customer preferences and attitude towards the tour products of the company as well as those provided by its competitors, buying behaviour of customers in UK, tourist attractions within UK and outside. The plan for collection of primary and secondary data through conducting the survey into the development of tour products of company for assisting decision making for the business is as follows:

Primary data – It is the data which is collected by the researcher for the specific purpose of the research or survey in question. This data is collected through interaction with the target population by obtaining their responses for the questions asked that directly relate to the subject matter of the survey. The methods which are used for the collection of primary and secondary data are questionnaires, interviews, etc. It is the original data collected specifically for research. The primary data will be collected for the survey about the development of tour products by the tour operator company using the questionnaire method under which the questionnaire designed specifically for the purpose of survey will be sent to the target population which include both existing and prospective customers. The customers will also be asked questions in person by the volunteers and the responses will be noted down by them. The questionnaires will also be sent through mails asking to submit the responses. The responses will be summarised for the extraction of relevant information for decision making (Djokovic, 2013).

Secondary Data – It is also known as the published data. It is the data which has already been collected for some other purpose and is in published form which can be used for the purpose of extraction of relevant information for making decisions in business context. The sources which can be used for the collection of primary data include data internally generated by company and presented in company reports, data published by commercial organizations and professional bodies such as market research and statistical companies, Office for National Statistics etc, testimonials on websites and other internet sources such as journal articles. The secondary data which directly relates to the consumer attitude and perception about the tour operations and development of tour products will be collected by using data publications from commercial organizations and professional bodies in context of consumer buying behaviour for the tour products, the company reports about the company information generated internally and EU statistics. The secondary data will be used for the purpose of survey in addition to the primary data collected using questionnaire and interviews.

Survey methodology and sampling frame

Survey Methodology – Survey is the method used for gathering information from the public by using various tools. The process is conducted in standardized form for the purpose of collecting effective information. Every survey is conducting for attaining a certain objective. The objective here is to collect the information for a tour company for the development of new product. The list of question should be able to provide all the information which is required for the new product (Majumdar, 2014). The method which can be used for conducting the survey is as follows-

Questionnaires – This method involves collecting information by asking a set of question for collecting the information about the product from the public. The question asked in is generally close- ended with limited response option. The surveyor may ask some open- ended question if the detailed information is required. The company should frame the question in a way to collect the data about consumer profile, preference, attitude and buying organisations behaviour.

Interview- The method involves direct interaction with the respondent and helps in collecting detail information. It facilitates attaining the follow-up of the questions for better understanding of information. It will be conducted face-to-face, or over phone, or more recently. Sampling Frame - Sampling is defined as the method of drawing the conclusion or solution about the universe of population based on study of portion of the sample. It is the scientific method used for conducting survey and involves least cost and help in saving time. The problem with the sampling is in getting representative of the sample and the result sometimes is not accurate.

The sampling frame will include the 75-80% of the target population, where the target population will include the consumers of the tour products of the company as well as its competitors, within and outside the country which can be directly or directly contacted in person or through mail or telephone. From the sampling frame, the sample will be chosen using simple random sampling method.                                                                                   

Questionnaire

1. Select your gender

• Male
• Female

2. What is your age group?

• 0-10 years
• 11-18 years
• 19-30 years
• 31- 45 years
• 46-60 years
• Above 60 years

3. What is your income class?

• 0 - £10,000
• £11,000 - £30,000
• £31,000 – £50,000
• £51,000 - £75,000
• Above £75,000

4. What kind of tour do you prefer?

• Domestic
• International
• Any of the two

5. How much do you spend generally while on tour?

• £10,000 - £25,000
• £25,000 - £50,000
• £50,000 - £1,00,000
• £1,00,000 - £2,00,000
• £2,00,000 & above

6. How often do you go on a tour in a year?

• Once in a year
• 2 -3 times
• 4 - 6 times
• Every month
• Never

7. What kind of stay do you prefer the most?

• Home stay
• Motel
• Hotels
• Resorts

8. For how many days do you usually plan a tour?

• 0-5
• 5-10
• 10-20
• 20 and above

9. Which of the following do you consider the most while selecting a tour product?

• Cost of the product
• Quality of food
• Quality of facilities and accommodation
• Brand of the company
• Others

10. The tour operations company with a high brand image offers better tour products than travel agencies. Do you agree?

• Agree
• Highly agree
• Disagree
• Highly disagree
• Neutral

Task 2

Summarising data using representative values

Representative values are the value which can be determined as the complete representative of the data. The value can be used for the purpose of decision making as it represents the whole of the data. Average is the value which provides a single view of the complete data. Mean, median and mode are generally used for the purpose of representation of the actual outcome of the data.

How much do you spend generally while on tour?	£10,000-£25,000	£25,000 - £50,000	£50,000 - £1,00,000		£2,00,000 & above
No of responses

Mean - Mean is the average of data and is calculated by dividing sum of value by the no of value. It is commonly referred as average. The mean is basically used in the situation where data are precise. The mean is generally the middle value of the data. For the purpose of calculating mean sum of value is divided by the no of value. The formula used for the purpose of computing mean is

The mean amount of budget of the customer on the basis of which decision should be made calculated using spreadsheet is 28. The management should consider it while developing the new project.

Median – It is generally the value of middle data when the data is arranged in some particular order. Before calculating the median the data should either be arranged in ascending order or descending order (Manikandan, 2011). It can be preferred when the data available is large in no. The formula used for the purpose of calculating median is Median Th term

The median of above data is 22 the management can make the decision on the basis of it.

Mode is the no which has the higher no of frequency or the data which has maximum no of repetition. It is least followed among all the measures of central tendency. In the data the highest frequency is 60 so it may be consider as the mode of the given data. However none of the values is being repeated therefore, there is no highest frequency for this.

Analysis - All the required computation is being made and on the basis of it average budget of the customer and preference of stay of the customer is being calculated. On the basis of it the company should decide which type of the customer should be concentrated while developing a new product. The company should build the product which should basically concentrate on the price range of £25000 to £50000 and should concentrate on providing best hotel in its new product as more customer are of these category. The company has made complete utilization of its data to come up to this decision. This data will help in creating the product which will be as per the requirement of the customer and helps the company in attaining its objective (Francis, 2015).  

Measures of Dispersion

Standard Deviation – The standard deviation of the responses received from the target population during the survey, calculated using the spreadsheet is as follows:

Standard Deviation

21.552262

It can be observed that the standard deviation of the responses is not far away from mean. The mean of the responses is 28 whereas the standard deviation is 21.55. This shows that the mean is not likely to deviate to a large extent from its place. The dispersion of mean is limited (Mahajan, 2014). Use of quartiles, percentiles and correlation coefficient in business decision making

Quartiles – these are the measures of dispersion which are used to divide the data in four equal parts, each representing 25% of the population or data set. The quartiles are used in making decisions for the business since they help in analysing what percentage of data lies below the first quartile representing 25%, second quartile representing 50% and third quartile representing 75%.

Percentiles – These are the measures which are used to determine the dispersion of the data values by dividing the data in 100 equal parts each representing 1/99th part. These values are used to make effective decisions for the business since they help in analysing the number of data values that are below or above a specified percentile for ranking.

Correlation Coefficient – It is measurement which is used to measure the direction and magnitude of the correlation between two independent variables. This measure is used in making effective decisions for business since they help in identifying the relationship between two variables and the extent to which these variables affect each other (Hirata, 2014).

Task 3

Pie Chart

The following pie chart shows the preference of customers during the tour with regards to stay and accommodation:

Analysis – From the above chart it can be observed that most of the customers prefer to stay at hotels rather than motel. The second preference is of home stay at house of friends and relatives after which is the stay at guest house. The tour operations company shall consider the preferred stay while designing its new tour product as hotels.

Bar Chart

From the above bar chart it can be observed that most of the customers spend more than 20 days during their international tours and majority of the customers spend 5-10 days during their domestic tours. The management shall determine the time of the new proposed tour product in accordance with the time mostly spent by the tourists while on domestic and international tour.

Histogram

The following histogram shows the number of responses in relation to the factors which affect the selection of a tour product by a customer:

From the above histogram, it can be observed that most of the customers consider cost as the major factors affecting their selection of the tour product offered by the tour operations company. Accommodation facility is also considered to be an important factor. The decision of developing the new product shall be based on focusing the quality of accommodation at optimum cost (Ricardi, 2011).

Trend line and forecast: The following is the chart showing the trend line for the number of tourists in UK for past five years extracted from the Official website of National Statistics:

From the above chart it can be observed that the Regression equation is far away from 1 which means that the forecast on the airs of trend line will be less reliable. The gradient of the trend line is y = 0.4x + 122.7, which can be used to forecast the number of tourist arrivals in UK for the next two years. The forecast is as follows:

y = 0.4x + 122.7

2016 = 0.4*6 + 122.7

        = 125.1 million

2017 = 0.4*7 +122.7

         = 125.5 million

Thus on the basis of trend line the forecasted number of tourist arrivals in UK for the year 2016 is 125.1 million and for the year 2017 is 125.5 million.

Business Presentation

Formal Business Report

To,

The Management,

Tour Operations Company

Subject: To provide information about the proposed new product development initiative of the company.

This report aims at providing the information to the management of the company on the basis of the research conducted and analysis of the responses made in relation to the emerging trends in the tourism industry and the consumer attitude and preferences about the tour products available in the market.

From the analysis of the responses received from the customers with regards to their preferences in relation to the selection and purchase of a tour product, it can be concluded that the products to be developed by the company shall include the preferences such as preference of hotels over motels and guest houses. Most of the population considers cost of the tour product as the, ajar factor affecting the selection of the tour products.

Thus, the management is recommended to develop the tour product in accordance with the results and responses received from customers by using the analysis of the research for making decisions for the business.

Regards,

Consultant

Task 4

Project Plan and critical path for the launch of a new tour product

Project plan is the plan for the implementation of a project including details of duration of the project, it’s scheduling and allocation of human resources on the tasks involved in the project. The techniques and tools for the processing of information are used for the presentation of plan and analysis of the feasibility and schedule of the project such as Gantt hart, Critical Path, Network Diagram, Project Schedule, Work Breakdown Structure, Human resource allocation chart etc. The following table explains the project plan for launch of a new tour product by the company including the details of the tasks to be included in the project along with the duration:

Activity	Description	Dependency	Duration
A	Research demand for new product	-	5 days
B	Prepare plan	A	2 days
C	Conduct cost benefit analysis	A	1 days
D	Develop prototype of the proposed tour product	B and C	5 days
E	Test in accordance with customer needs	D	2 days
F	Incorporate changes required	D	3 days
G	Launch the product	E and F	1 day

Network Diagram

It is used by the project manager to know the time span which is allowable for each activity of the project. The network diagram of the project depicting the flow of activities and their duration in order to determine the critical path is as follows:

Critical Path – It is the path on the network diagram which has the longest duration of the route or a path on which all the activities have a zero float the critical path of the above project can be calculated by identifying the longest time route through the project as follows:

Possible Paths

A-B-D-F-G = 16 days

A-B-D-E-G = 15 days

A-C-D-E-G = 14 days

A-C-D-F-G = 15 days

The path with the longest duration is A-B-D-F-G with duration of 16 days. Therefore the critical path will be A-B-D-F-G.

Gantt chart: The following is the Gantt chart of the project which shows the critical activities in red colour and the non-critical activities in blue colour:

Feasibility analysis to assess viability of the project: The feasibility analysis of the project refers to as the analysis and evaluation of the financial and accounting viability of the project for an organization. It can be performed with the help of financial tools for investment decisions through investment appraisal methods such as Net Present Value of the project, Internal Rate of Return of the project, its payback period, sensitivity analysis of the project with regards to external factors and changes etc.

The following table shows the costs involved in the project for launching a new tour product and benefits to be received from the project every year, assuming the cost of capital to be 10% and life of project of 5 years:

Year	Cash Flows (£)
0	-100000
1	40000
2	45000
3	50000
4	55000
5	60000

Net Present Value – It is the value which indicates the difference between the present value of cash inflows from the project and the present value of cash outflows from the project. The higher the NPV, the better is the project. The NPV of the project calculating using spreadsheet is as follows:

NPV	£32,673.16

Internal Rate of Return – It is also known as the Return on Investment (ROI). It is the rate of return at which the present value of cash inflow is equal to the present value of cash outflow. For a project to be feasible the internal rate of return shall be higher than its cost of capital. The IRR of the project calculated using spreadsheet is as follows:

IRR

18%

Recommendation – On the basis of calculation of above investment appraisal method, it can be concluded that the Net Present value of the project is positive and therefore the project has high profitability. It will be able to generate good returns for the company. Also the IRR from the project is higher than its cost of capital. Therefore the project is feasible and financially viable. The company is recommended to implement the project and launch the new tour product for its customers with the objective of increasing profitability (Weygandt, 2015).

Conclusion

From the above analysis of the research of the Tour Operations Company in relation to the customer preferences about the tour products of the company and the emerging market trends of the tourism industry, it can be concluded that the results obtained from the survey will be helpful for the management of the company to make effective decisions for the development of the proposed tour product. The marketing management shall consider the findings and analysis of the research to make decisions.

References

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