BUSI $650-$ Assignment $1$B$.$ Moving Average $(40\%)$

Imagine you are a consultant hired by a retail store looking to enhance customer satisfaction. The management wants to employ data$-$driven strategies to understand customer preferences, improve service, and ultimately boost sales. Your task is to design a comprehensive data collection and analysis plan.

a$)$ Identify both numerical and non$-$numerical data relevant to understanding customer satisfaction. Explain how each data type contributes to the overall analysis.

b$)$ Propose a plan for random sampling to ensure a representative subset of customers is included. Suggest how stratified sampling could be applied to ensure diversity in the sample, considering factors like age, income, and location.

c$)$ Consider the follwoing dataset representing the daily sales figures $($in dollars$)$ of the store over a period of one month. The dataset contains $30$ data points, each representing the sales amount for a specific day.

To smooth out the daily sales fluctuations, the store owner decides to calculate a moving average. A moving average is a statistical technique that involves selecting a specific time period, summing up the data points within that period, and dividing by the number of points to obtain an average. This process is then repeated by shifting the time window one data point at a time until the entire dataset is covered. The resulting moving average series helps smooth out shortterm fluctuations, providing a clearer representation of underlying trends or patterns in the data. Calculate the $5-$day moving average of the dataset. $5$ how your calculations and your figure.

d$)$ Explain the trend of sales performance.