Case Study: Online Orders at a Department Store

Case Study: Buying Pattern of Online Customers in a Large

The data file “Case-Online Orders-Pivot Tables.xlsx” contains data on 500 customer
orders. The data was collected over a period of two months from the customers placing
orders online. As the orders are placed, customer information is recorded in the data base.
Data on several categorical and numerical values are recorded. The categorical variables
shown in the data file are day of the week, time, payment type (credit, debit cards, etc.),
region of the country order was placed from, order volume, sale or promotion item, free
shipping offer, gender, and customer survey rating. The quantitative variables include order
quantity and the dollar value of the order placed or Total Orders. The manager of the store
wants to understand the buying pattern of the customers by summarizing and displaying the
data visually and numerically.

Suppose you are an intern for this store chain and are given the responsibility to
prepare a summary of the customer data that can help understand the buying pattern of the
customers and also help improve the online order process to attract more online customers
to the store.

You are familiar with one of the tools available in EXCEL – the Pivot Table that can be
used in extracting information from such large data base. In this case, the pivot tables can
help break the data down by categories so that useful insight can be obtained. For example,
this tool can create a table of orders received by the geographical region, or summarize the
orders by the day or time of the week. Perform the following analyses on the data to answer
the questions and concerns the manager expressed in the meeting.

(Note: Identify each problem clearly and for each problem analyze your results and
the graph and summarize your findings.)

(1) Create a pivot table that will provide a summary of number of orders received on each
day of the week. Create a bar chart and a pie chart of the pivot table created to visually
see the orders received by the online department on each day. Your pie chart should
display both the numbers and the percent for each category. Briefly describe the table
and graphs and comment on the number of orders.

(2) Create a pivot table to provide the count of number of orders by the time of the day (for
example: morning, midday, etc.). Create a bar chart and a pie chart of the pivot table
created to visually see the orders received by the online department by the time of
day. Your pie chart should display both the numbers and the percent for each

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 Case Study: Online Orders at a Department Store

category. Explain the table and graphs and comment on the number of orders
received by the company.

(3) Compile the orders by the region that is, create a pivot table and a bar chart to
summarize the number of orders by the region. What conclusion you can draw?

(4) Create a pivot table to summarize the customer rating by gender where the row labels
should show “Gender” and the column labels should show the count of “Customer
Survey Ratings” (excellent, good, fair, poor). Construct a bar chart of the count of
“Customer Survey Ratings” (excellent, good, fair, poor) on the y-axis and gender on
the x-axis. Create a separate table to display the gender and the percent of ratings
instead of count. Construct a bar chart of your table. Comment on the results.

(5) Calculate the descriptive statistics of the “Total Orders ($)” column. What are the
minimum, maximum, and the average of the total orders received? From the
descriptive statistics calculated, compare the mean and the median of the total orders.
What conclusion you can draw regarding the shape of total orders data? (Note: to
calculate the descriptive statistics, use the following command sequence in Excel:
Data → Data Analysis→ Descriptive Statistics and complete the dialog box that is
displayed. Do not forget to check the Summary Statistics box.

(6) Construct a frequency distribution of the “Total Orders ($)” column using the Pivot
Chart option. Group the values from a minimum value of 0 to a maximum of 400 in
steps of 40. Show your frequency distribution and the histogram. Label each bar of
the histogram to show the values for each bar.

(7) The calculated statistics in part (5) and it seems appropriate to conclude that the the
total orders data is left skewed so that Chebyshev’s rule can be applied. What
conclusions you can draw using the Chebyshev’s rule? (use the mean and the standard
deviation of the orders to draw your conclusion. If you get negative values consider
the values to be zero.)

(8) If the total orders data can be assumed to be approximately symmetrical, what
conclusions you can draw about orders received? Use the mean and standard
deviation calculated in part (5).

Present all the pivot tables and charts in a word file format and prepare a brief report
with your comments and suggestion to improve the online order process.

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