Case Problem 1. Young Professional Magazine

Young Professional magazine was developed for a target audience of recent college graduates who are in their first 10 years in a business/professional career. In its two years of publication, the magazine has been fairly successful. Now the publisher is interested in expanding the magazine’s advertising base. Potential advertisers continually ask about the demographics and interests of subscribers to Young Professional. To collect this information, the magazine commissioned a survey to develop a profile of its subscribers. The survey results will be used to help the magazine choose articles of interest and provide advertisers with a profile of subscribers. As a new employee of the magazine, you have been asked to help analyze the survey results, a portion of which are shown in the following table.

Some of the survey questions are as follows:

1. What is your age?

2. Are you: Male Female 

3. Do you plan to make any real estate purchases in the next two years? Yes No 

4. What is the approximate total value of financial investments, exclusive of your home, owned by you or members of your household?

5. How many stock/bond/mutual fund transactions have you made in the past year?

6. Do you have broadband access to the Internet at home? Yes No 

7. Please indicate your total household income last year.

8. Do you have children? Yes No 

The file Professional contains the responses to these questions. The table shows the portion of the file pertaining to the first five survey respondents.

Managerial Report

Prepare a managerial report summarizing the results of the survey. In addition to statistical summaries, discuss how the magazine might use these results to attract advertisers. You might also comment on how the survey results could be used by the magazine’s editors to identify topics that would be of interest to readers. Your report should address the following issues, but do not limit your analysis to just these areas.

1. Develop appropriate descriptive statistics to summarize the data.

2. Develop 95% confidence intervals for the mean age and household income of subscribers.

3. Develop 95% confidence intervals for the proportion of subscribers who have broadband access at home and the proportion of subscribers who have children.

4. Would Young Professional be a good advertising outlet for online brokers? Justify your conclusion with statistical data.

5. Would this magazine be a good place to advertise for companies selling educational software and computer games for young children?

6. Comment on the types of articles you believe would be of interest to readers of Young Professional.

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