Represents a Survey Study Made

¶ … represents a survey study made by department stores in order to determine the satisfaction level of customers. Regarding the characteristics of respondents, the researchers were interested in their gender, age, they were also interested in the reasons for purchase, the departments they are interested in, the payment type, the type of store they prefer, the services in these stores, their quality, and others.

Research methods that focus on qualitative data are focused on understanding, on describing certain characteristics of the variables involved in the study, on identifying similarities and contrasts between variables or groups that are used in determining behaviors at population level. Quantitative research methods are used in controlling, measuring, and evaluating phenomena of interest to researchers (Jacobsen, 2010). Descriptive statistics are used in identifying the characteristics used in these research methods (Trochim, 2006). This study represents a survey research, which is one of the most important areas of measurement (Trochim, 2006).

The interval level variables in the data are: agecat referring to age categories, and dist_cat referring to the distance between the customers' homes and the stores they purchase from.

The ordinal level variables in the date are: dept referring to the most favored department, payment referring to the most preferred payment type, price referring to customers' opinion on the prices in these stores, numitems referring to the number of items these customers usually purchase, org referring to the customers' opinion on how the stores are organized, service referring to the services provided by the stores to their customers, quality referring to the quality of products and services in these stores, overall referring to the overall satisfaction of customers.

The categorical level variables in the date are: gender referring to the gender of customers, regular referring to the number of shopping sessions in these stores, reason1 referring to the most important reason for which customers prefer these stores, reason2 referring to other reasons for which customers shop in these stores, purchase referring to whether the customers purchase products when they visit these stores, followup referring to whether the customers want to receive newsletters from the stores and the channel they want to use for receiving such mail, store referring to which of the stores customers prefer to shop, contact referring to whether customers prefer to be contact by the store.

Interval variables Frequency distribution Agecat Category Percent 18-24-5% 25-34-25% 35-49-30% 50-64-25% 64+ 15% As one may observe, most respondents in this study are in the 35-49 and in the 50-64 age groups. The least respondents are in the 18-24%. Ordinal variables Frequency distribution Dept results show that the clothing department is preferred by 25% of respondents, followed by the electronics department with 18%. Payment results reveal that 35% of customers prefer to pay with their credit cards, while 52% prefer to pay with cash.

Regarding the prices in these stores, 26% have a somewhat negative opinion, 18% have a strongly negative opinion, while 42% have a neutral opinion. Categorical variables Frequency distribution Gender: 63% of customers are female, and 37% are male. Regular: 38% stated that they shop several times a week, and 35% said they shop once a week. Reason1: 26% of respondents said they prefer these stores because of their promotional campaigns, and 38% said they have other reasons for shopping there.

Reason2: 32% said that an important reason for shopping there is represented by the prices, 18% selected the convenience reason, while 25% selected other reasons. Followup: most respondents selected the e-mail variant. Inferential statistics The t-test is one of the most used statistical methods. Its main.