Running head: SAMPLING AND DATA COLLECTION PLAN

Sampling and Data Collection Plan

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SAMPLING AND DATA COLLECTION PLAN

Sampling and Data Collection Plan

Introduction
In todays world the technology is ever-changing, even the most advanced electronic
gadgets are no longer advanced after a year. And in this ever changing market capturing new
market as well as retaining the old market shares (by retaining the customers) is a valid concern
of marketing department of all firms. The Grape Inc. is also a part of this competition. Though
they are the leaders of mobile industry but their market shares are declining day by day. In this
situation identifying whether the market share gets affected by launch of new devices is of vital
importance. As all other company launches at least a new device or newer version of device each
year and Grape Inc. is also part of it so identification of the affected market share is important. It
will give them idea about the potential demand as well as the gross sales and based on that
forecast they can allocate their budget in advertisement and other areas.
Research Question
Here he marketing team and management has the following question,
RQ: Is there a difference in Grapes market shares (DV) based on the introduction of uDevice X
and uDevice X Plus (IV)?
If there is a strong evidence that the new devices affects the market positively and
significantly they can allocate more budget in all areas to increase the gross sales and thus the
profit.
The hypothesis Statement;
H0) There is no difference in market shares (DV) based on the introduction of uDevice X and
uDevice X Plus(IV)?
H1) There is a difference (positive) in market shares (DV) based on the introduction of uDevice
X and uDevice X Plus(IV).
Research Design
a) & b) Population and size:
The population of interest werethe market shares of total mobile industry market as
captured by Grape Inc. Now as the market share changes by time so we have to define the time

SAMPLING AND DATA COLLECTION PLAN

period. The best idea is to get a smaller time period like a day to get more accurate conclusion,
however getting the information per day might not be possible. So we can take the time period
per week or per month, lets say here we are considering per month as the time period. So the
total population size is the market shares since the company launched its uDevice in the market
which counts to be around 84 data points. And this is the population size.
c) Sampling elements which may be collected through data mining:
As here the main interest is to check whether the launch of new device had an impact on
sales or not so the main interest of data is the market share data. Now this data is basically
historical data (by certain time period time by day or week) which can be summarized per month
as inline to the interest. So the data collection needs no survey or other method but data mining
approach to mine the historical data as per research need.
d) The sample size:
Here our target is to take the sample size using a 95% confidence level, and a 5% margin
of error. And this gave us a sample size of 289(See calculation in the Appendix A for details) to
represent the population, but as the population does not contain this much data points as well as
each year a new device is getting launched so considering this much sample size is not practical.
So we can consider a sample size of 24 months which is realistic in this case.
e) Method:
Here our interest is to check the change in market share so we need to take the market
shares before and after the launch. Representing a time series study, this study does not need any
sampling method. However we can also use a simple random sampling method to choose the
months and thus data points to make the results more valid.
Validity (and reliability)
This research is somewhat time series analysis which is generally considering the time
series data of before and after the launch of uDevice XS. The period before the launch is
representing the share due to uDevice X and after period is for uDevice XS. So being a time

SAMPLING AND DATA COLLECTION PLAN

series analysis we dont need to be too much concerned about the validity. The research validity
will depend on the data mining/data collection part as it is of utmost importance as well as
selecting the methods to apply in the research to get the objective done. And as here we are not
collecting the data from human subjects so we need not to worry about them.
Data collection
Here the data should be collected from internal as well as external sources. Internal
sources would give the total sales of uDevice per month and external source would give us the
sales of other companies. So these two are really important in this study.From these two
information we can create the market share each month which is our interest variable.
Data Storage
The data is collected from the web information like web servers, and after the collected as
the data is really becomes small (only few months market share) it can be stored in a local
system. The data can be protected by proper authorization so that only authorized people can use
it and a backup of the information should also be stored in the server for any mishap.
Conclusion
Here our interest is to check the change in the market share or to be precise whether the
change is positive or not so the related data can be collected from the authenticated sources
which will make the research valid and reliable. On the next step we can use a two sample tests
to check whether the new device has significant impact or not.
Appendix
Appendix A:
From the past information we can assume a point estimate of the market share to be around 25%
so the required sample size is,
Sample Size 0.25*(1-0.25)*(1.96/0.05)2 = 289.

SAMPLING AND DATA COLLECTION PLAN