Is the number of export markets in which a firm sells its products related to the firm’s return on sales? The article “Technology Industry Success: Strategic Options for Small and Medium Firms” (Bus. Horizons, Sept.–Oct. 2003: 41–46) gave the accompanying information on the number of export markets for one group of firms whose return on sales was less than 10% and another group whose return was at least 10%.

The investigators reported that an appropriate test of hypotheses resulted in a P-value between .01 and .05. What hypotheses do you think were tested, and do you agree with the stated P-value information? What assumptions if any are needed in order to carry out the test? Can the plausibility of these assumptions be investigated based just on the foregoing summary data? Explain.

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Return Less than 10% At least 10% Sample size Sample mean 36 47 5.12 8.26 Sample SD .57 1.20