Business

 

Business

 Introduction

Business research can be defined as a systematic and organized process that attempts to investigate a particular problem encountered, business opportunity or experienced in a work setting that requires a solution. It consists of a series of steps that are formulated, designed and executed with the sole goal of finding the solution to the issues raised by the interested party, management or client. Identifying the business opportunities available in a particular area is the first step in business research methods. (Sekaram and Bougle, 2009) Information is gathered, analyzed and factors connected with the opportunity available are determined. The issue is solved after taking the necessary measures to address the issues raised. (Sullivan, 2003)

1. Our readers may be interested in 4G Smartphone users’ monthly bills. Could you please provide a summary on this?

  The 4G Smartphone Monthly Users’ Summary

Frequency Distribution table
0  to 25	19
26 to 50	30
51 to 75	53
76  to 100	30
101  to 150	16
151  to  350	2

 

                                      Frequency Distribution Chart For Users Monthly Bill.

                       

The average rate of usage in terms of average monthly cost is 62.5 dollars. The highest frequency of monthly bill is between $51 to $75 per month.  This is about 35% of the total customers. This is closely followed by monthly bills amounting to between $26 to $50. Bills beyond 151 dollars are minimal. (Johnson and Rogers, 1951)  The highest frequency of bills payable is $53. Most customers pay $53 dollars mostly on prepaid bills. The modal group is $26 – $75 and the mode is $53. The range between 0 -25 customers pay about $19 dollars. This is about 13% of all the customers. The other class of customers whose bills average 25 – 50 dollars and those also in the group 76 – 100 average about 20% of the total customers.  The lowest percentage lies in the group 151 – 350 which contributes less than 1.35  of the total customers.

2. Our readers may also be interested in how the type of plan; that is, pre-paid or post-paid, affects the monthly bill.

Pre-paid and Post-paid Average

	Pre-paid	Post paid
Total	4534	5359
Average	69.75385	63.04706

 

The pre-paid method of bill is more popular and profitable than the post-pay. The average monthly payment of the pre-paid bill is $69.8 dollars while the post-paid is $63.05 (Lovelock, 1983) This means that most customers prefer the prepaid method of payment. The difference is not so large as the difference is about $6. It can be concluded that on average most people would not be affected so much by the change of network plan as the preference is almost the same. Most prefer to use the prepaid option because it’s convenient to use and has less formalities than the post-paid one that includes bills payable after they have been incurred.

3. Can you provide a summary of the most frequently downloaded entertainment content?

The most downloaded product on the 4G Smart phone by the users is the downloading of videos that account for 34% of all the downloaded content. (Vance, 2003)

Summary of the most downloaded content

Games	Music	Ringtones	Screensavers	Videos	Wallpapers	Total
18	23	24	7	45	16	133
14%	17%	18%	5%	34%	12%	100

 

4. I wish to write about current user satisfaction regarding their 4G providers. Can you tell me?

The current user of the 4G networks is on average fairly very satisfied. 42% of the users are very satisfied while 33% are moderately satisfied. 27% of the total users are a little dissatisfied while 7% are very dissatisfied. (Diaz-Ruiz, 2013)

1. a) The overall distribution of satisfaction levels. Are users generally satisfied or not?

They are generally satisfied. The total of moderately satisfied customers are 33%, the very satisfied are 42% that totals to 75% as compared to the little dissatisfied who are 18% and the very dissatisfied ones at 7 % which totals to 25%.

 

 

Analysis of customer satisfaction percentages.

Little Dissatisfied	Moderately Satisfied	Very Dissatisfied	Very Satisfied	Total
27	49	11	63	150
18%	33%	7%	42%	100%

 

1. Is there a difference in the satisfaction levels of male and female users?

Yes. Generally 46% of women are very satisfied with the 4G Smart phones providers while only 41% of men are very satisfied. Only 13% of women are a little dissatisfied compared to 20% of men who are a little dissatisfied. 32% of men are moderately satisfied with the 4G Smart phone providers compared 33% of women who are moderately satisfied. Men and Women are equally very dissatisfied with the 4G Smart phone providers at 8%. (Kotler, 1991)

Analysis of customer satisfaction among male and female customers.

	Male	%	Female	%
Little Dissatisfied	22	20%	5	13%
Moderately Satisfied	36	32%	13	33%
Very Dissatisfied	8	7%	3	8%
Very Satisfied	45	41%	18	46%
Total	111	100%	39	100%

 

5. Finally, can you tell me whether factors such as […] influence the monthly bill? Is there a factor that stands out or is there no single aspect which has a strong influence on the bill?

Yes, the phone plan of the customers influences the monthly bills. The prepaid phone plan attracts more bills than the post pay phone plan. They both have averages of $69.8 and $63.05 respectively. (Drucker, 1999)

 

State	M/Bill	%
NT	199	3
SA	1300	22
TAS	344	6
VIC	629	11
WA	998	17
QLD	2329	40
	5799	100

 

The state with the initials QLD had the highest sales during the season and it accounted for 40% of the total sales. The closest state, SA, had 22% while the least NT, had 3%. (Weisberg, 1992)

The use of smart phone to facilitate job related communication influences the monthly bill. The use of sms, mms and phone call frequencies also influences the amount of bill payable. The use of smart phone for entertainment activities also influences the monthly bill. (Upton and Cook, 2008)

Smart phone Entertainment Activities

	%For Work	Calls	SMS	MMS
Total	2470	3588	1959	127
Average	16.35761589	23.76159	12.97351	0.84106

 

Summary of the Entertainment content on smart phone

Games	Music	Ringtones	Screensavers	Videos	Wallpapers	Total
18	23	24	7	45	16	133
14%	17%	18%	5%	34%	12%	100

 

To conclude, there are various factors that can influence the monthly phone bills that are associated with the 4G smart phone. Because of their advance features, most users of the Smart phone spend a lot of time using their phones to entertain themselves on different contents that are available on the phones. The Video feature on the smart phone attracts a lot of customers as it’s the top most preferred entertainment feature on the smart phone. The other feature which attracts a lot of customers is the personalization feature for ringtones which can be utilize to record favorite songs and show favorable photos when the smart phone rings before it’s answered.  Most of these features are favored by women who are generally very satisfied with their smart phones than men.

References

Sullivan, S. (2003). Economics: Principles in action. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey Pearson

Prentice Hall.

Sekaram, U., Bougle, R. (2009) Research Methods for Business. A Skill Building Approach, 5^th Edition. West Sussex, UK. John Wiley & sons.

Kotler, P. (1991) ‘Marketing Management: analysis planning and control’, 7th

Edition, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Lovelock, C.H. (1983) ‘Classifying Services to Gain Strategic Marketing Insights’,

Diaz-Ruiz, C. A. (2013). “Assembling Market Representations”. Marketing Theory 13 (3): 245–261

Drucker, F. (1999). Management. Challenges of the 21st Century. New York: Harper Business,

Vance, D. (2003) Financial analysis and decision making: tools and techniques to solve

financial problems and make effective business decisions. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Weisberg, H.F (1992) Central Tendency and Variability, Sage University Paper Series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences,

Upton, G. and Cook, I. (2008) Oxford Dictionary of Statistics, OUP ISBN 978-0-19-954145-4 (entry for “central tendency”)

Johnson NL, Rogers CA (1951) “The moment problem for unimodal distributions”. Annals of Mathematical Statistics