Reference no: EM133282364 , Length: word count:3000

Forecasting for Managers

HBAT: Understanding Customersl

HBAT (Hair, Block, Anderson and Tatham Company) sells paper products to two market segments: the newsprint industry and the magazine industry. Further, these paper products are sold to these market segments, either directly to the customer or indirectly through a broker. HBAT wanted to develop a better understanding of both the characteristics of its customers and the relationships between their perceptions of HBAT, and their actions towards HBAT (e.g., satisfaction and likelihood to recommend). From this understanding of its customers, HBAT will be in a good position to develop its Forecasting plan for the next year.

To develop this level of understanding of its situation, a survey of existing customers of HBAT was conducted through an established marketing research firm. Three types of information were collected in a survey of 200 purchasing managers from firms buying from HBAT. A first type of data reflects the characteristics of the respondent and includes information such as the size of the customer and length of the purchase relationship. The second type of information was perceptions of HBAT's performance on 13 attributes. These attributes (developed through focus groups, a pre-test, and used in previous studies) are considered to be the most influential in the selection of suppliers in the paper industry. The third type of information relates to purchase outcomes and business relationships (e.g., satisfaction with HBAT and whether the firm would consider a strategic alliance / partnership with HBAT).

The data are available in the HBAT_Data.xls file on Blackboard and a definition of each variable and an explanation of its coding are given in Appendix 1. Please assume the sample of 200 respondents is representative of HBAT's customers.

The Tasks

Please write a report, of no more than 3,000 words, to the management of HBAT addressing the following issues:

Question 1. Describe the respondents of the questionnaire, i.e., using descriptive statistics, tables or charts to describe and summarise the customer characteristics variables.

Question 2. Develop models to predict satisfaction, likelihood to recommendation, and likelihood to purchase from the perceptions of the performance variables.

Requirements: For each model,
• Start with a general model which includes all the appropriate variables and then discuss your model selection process.
• Comment on the final model and fully interpret the model estimation results. What are the most influential performance variables?

Question 3. Based on the above regression analysis, make a recommendation to HBAT that enhances their understanding of their customers so that the management can develop its marketing plan that will feed into their Forecasting Plan for the next year.