Running head: PROBLEM SOLUTION: USA WORLD BANK
Problem Solution: USA World Bank
USA World Bank has a dilemma; two new projects, one geared to consumers and one project geared for small businesses, both have generated interest when briefed to management. For reasons no one can remember now USA World Bank has only picked one project each year to implement. At issue are the sampling methods used for each project for the research collected.
Situation Analysis
Issue and Opportunity Identification
The New Product Development group is pushing the Consumer Instant Rewards card. The consultant firm, Best Market Research, was utilized during their data review process and strongly recommends the new consumer card. The data was gathered from a survey at the USA World Bank website; the gender and age ratios differ from census averages and are questioned by the Board of Directors. A large number of respondents were tallied: 140,000 but as read in the text, “An average may not be representative of all the data” (Lind, ch 1, p 16 – 17, 2004). Is this population really representative enough to warrant an investment in promotions geared for the target consumers based on these results?
The Marketing Development Group is presenting an option for a new Small Business card with a higher limit for capital purchases and rewards. USA World Bank managers from all regions queried small focus groups to discern interest and the response seemed to be universally positive for a small business card to aid in capital purchases and have rewards like a consumer card. “The purpose of inferential statistics is to find something about a population based on a sample” (Lind, ch 8, p 2 – 8, 2004). There was a 40% figure thrown in by one of the group for the percentage of accounts that were considering leaving USA World Bank although the figure seemed to be just a guess on his part and unsubstantiated with facts. The team itself, after thinking...