INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES

GHAZIABAD

PGDBM 5th TERM

END TERM EXAMINATION-December – 2007

NOTE: ALL QUESTIONS ARE COUMPOLSORY

1. A company is engaged in the manufacture OF Washing machines and a

few other products. But, the former accounts for a sizeable proportion of its
total production. Of late, the company has been finding it increasingly
difficult to maintain its competitiveness on account of the availability of
washing machines of a number of companies within the affordable price
range. There are 17 brands which together are offering 88 models.
The top management of this company has considered the problem of
increasing competition and declining sales. It is of the opinion that a survey
should be conducted to ascertain the customer satisfaction in respect of its
washing machines. However, before undertaking a detailed survey, it would
like to be clear on the concept of consumer satisfaction.

Questions:
1. How would you identify parameters which can effectively measure
consumer satisfaction?
2. Construct a suitable questionnaire to measure customer satisfaction on
the basis of parameters you identified.

2. In 1988, Japan based Konica Corporation, decided to have a

representative in India and started scouting around for a distributor. It
selected Goa based Photophone Industries Ltd. Thereafter there have been
several developments for the company.
The present position is , however not as good as the company would like to
see. It is facing severe competition with Kodak and Fuji, who have been
spending heavily on brand building. Kodak had also established its
manufacturing base in India in 1995. During the past ten years, the market
share of Konica has declined. In view of this, Konoca is now keen to
increase its market share. It would like to build up image and strengthen
itself from the grass root level.

Question:
Assuming that marketing research can help Konica to achieve its
objectives, prepare a suitable research proposal for the proposed study.
 3. Rajat Sharma has been appointed as the trainee in the Credit Management Department of
L. B. Bank Limited. His immediate boss Mr. D. K. Saxena has given him the following data
related to average days of outstanding creditors of a prospective borrower who has
requested for a working capital loan.

Creditor’s Code Days Outstanding Creditor’s Code Days Outstanding Creditor’s Code Days Outstanding
1 200 18 189 35 230
2 250 19 215 36 190
3 225 20 265 37 205
4 235 21 259 38 215
5 185 22 235 39 211
6 181 23 264 40 223
7 250 24 216 41 259
8 225 25 250 42 246
9 210 26 226 43 254
10 215 27 223 44 245
11 226 28 221 45 248
12 220 29 229 46 231
13 229 30 230 47 206
14 198 31 210 48 195
15 195 32 260 49 198
16 205 33 216 50 235
17 260 34 215
Assume that you are Rajat Sharma and then, answer the questions, which he was
supposed to answer:
On the basis of the above data, comment on the following:
(i) Average Days Outstanding.
(ii) Variation in the Days Outstanding.
(iii) Symmetry in the distribution of Days Outstanding.
(iv) Concentration of Days Outstanding towards some central value.
(v) Overall comment about the distribution of income among the workers.

4. A personnel manager of a large company wishes to know if employee satisfaction is

independent of job category. Test the hypothesis of independence based on the following
data with α = .05.

Categories
Satisfaction I II III IV
High 40 60 52 48
Medium 103 87 82 88
Low 57 53 66 64
 Find a suitable measure of association between satisfaction and employee category for
the data given in above Table. Give your comments about the relation between the two.

1. 5. Mr. Shyam Sunder has a research project in which he wants to examine the
impact of Yoga and Music on the efficiency of workers in an industry. For that, he has
conducted an experiment on twenty workers of M/S Lakshmipati Steel Limited. He has
divided workers into two groups of 10 each. One group is exposed to Yoga and another
Musical Relaxation. And, to determine what time these relaxation exercises are more
effective – morning and evening, he conducted the experiment on both the times. His
specific design is as thus – first, he developed a multi-dimensional scale to measure
efficiency of workers on a 20 point scale; he collected the efficiency data for a week
and he estimated average efficiency of each worker per day; second, he exposed both
the groups for relaxation exercises – Yoga and Music Relaxation for 15 days in the
morning before the start of the shift and after that for a week, efficiency data
related to all workers is collected; and finally, he exposed both the groups again for
relaxation exercises – Yoga and Music Relaxation for next 15 days in the evening
towards the end of the shift and after that for a week, efficiency data related to all
workers is again collected. The data has been summarized below:

EFFICIENCY LEVEL
PARTICIPA EFFICIENCY LEVEL AFTER THE EFFICIENCY LEVEL AFTER THE
GROUP BEFORE THE
NTS MORNING EXPERIMENTS EVENING EXPERIMENTS
EXPERIMENTS
1 1 12 16 14
2 1 14 16 15
3 1 13 16 17
4 1 8 12 16
5 1 9 12 10
6 1 10 13 10
7 1 12 15 12
8 1 14 17 11
9 1 15 18 15
10 1 6 11 12
11 2 7 10 10
12 2 8 10 11
13 2 9 11 10
14 2 12 13 13
15 2 14 15 15
16 2 16 17 17
17 2 13 19 15
18 2 10 14 16
19 2 9 15 14
20 2 8 14 14
Using the above data, formulate suitable hypotheses, use the suitable Statistical
Tests and drive the necessary conclusions from the experimental data.