Reference no: EM132459789

BAB08 - Applied Business Methods - Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University

Case Project Description

Research Question

The central goal of this case project is to investigate how various explanatory variables are related to (i) consumers' ratings (i.e., in the range of 1 to 5 stars) about local restaurants and (ii) how other consumers rate the helpfulness of a certain consumer review. The full set of available variables will be explained in Section 3.

The Tasks

Your tasks in this project consist of: (i) gathering relevant knowledge about the background and context of the problem; (ii) formulating formal hypotheses about the relationships between various variables; (iii) step-by-step and thorough analysis of the available data with appropriate statistical methods (covered in this course) to evaluate the hypotheses; (iv) writing a formal and intriguing report about your findings.

- Background. Besides reading this document, it is necessary to do some extra research on your own about the background of the problem. Deepening your understanding about the research question is very helpful for you to formulate the research hypotheses. Electronic databases available in the Erasmus University Library, particularly JSTOR, Science Direct, and Google Scholar, are helpful in this task. You are definitely not required to become an expert in this topic, so don't invest an excessive amount of time on this part.

- Hypotheses. Hypotheses represent your educated conjectures about the relationships between variables after obtaining an enhanced understanding of the research question. The set of hypotheses serves as the guidelines for your subsequent empirical analysis.

- Step-by-step analysis. The available data are then analyzed with univariate, bivariate and multivariate methods. Of course, the primary goal is to evaluate the set of hypotheses you have made.

- The final report. The final report is meant to be a readable article summarizing your research results based on the available data. Various components of the final report are explained in more details (attached).

Attachment:- Case Description.rar