Final
Project Assignment Instructions
Scenario
Background:
A marketing company based out of New
York City is doing well and is looking to expand internationally. The CEO and
VP of Operations decide to enlist the help of a consulting firm that you work
for, to help collect data and analyze market trends.
You work for Mercer Human Resources.
The Mercer Human Resource Consulting website lists
prices of certain items in selected cities around the world. They also report
an overall cost-of-living index for each city compared to the costs of hundreds
of items in New York City (NYC). For example, London at 88.33 is 11.67% less
expensive than NYC.
More specifically, if you choose to
explore the website further you will find a lot of fun and interesting data.
You can explore the website more on your own after the course concludes.
https://mobilityexchange.mercer.com/Insights/
cost-of-living-rankings#rankings
Assignment
Guidance:
In the Excel document, you will find
the 2018 data for 17 cities in the data set Cost of Living. Included are the
2018 cost of living index, cost of a 3-bedroom apartment (per month), price of
monthly transportation pass, price of a mid-range bottle of wine, price of a
loaf of bread (1 lb.), the price of a gallon of milk and price for a 12 oz. cup
of black coffee. All prices are in U.S. dollars.
You use this information to run a
Multiple Linear Regression to predict Cost of living, along with calculating
various descriptive statistics. This is given in the Excel output (that is, the
MLR has already been calculated. Your task is to interpret the data).
Based on this information, in which
city should you open a second office in? You must justify your answer. If you
want to recommend 2 or 3 different cities and rank them based on the data and
your findings, this is fine as well.
Deliverable
Requirements:
This should be ¾ to 1 page, no more
than 1 single-spaced page in length, using 12-point Times New Roman font. You
do not need to do any calculations, but you do need to pick a city to open a
second location at and justify your answer based upon the provided results of
the Multiple Linear Regression.
The format of this assignment will be
an Executive Summary. Think of this assignment as the first page of a much
longer report, known as an Executive Summary, that essentially summarizes your
findings briefly and at a high level. This needs to be written up neatly and
professionally. This would be something you would present at a board meeting in
a corporate environment. If you are unsure of an Executive Summary, this
resource can help with an overview. How to Write an Executive Summary That
Gets the Job Done 2023.pdf
Things to
Consider:
To help you make this decision here
are some things to consider:
- Based on the
MLR output, what variable(s) is/are significant? - From the
significant predictors, review the mean, median, min, max, Q1 and Q3
values? - It might be
a good idea to compare these values to what the New York value is for
that variable. Remember New York is the baseline as that is where
headquarters are located. - Based on the
descriptive statistics, for the significant predictors, what city has the
best potential? - What city
or cities fall are below the median? - What city
or cities are in the upper 3rd quartile?