A marketing department team for The Springville Herald is ch

A marketing department team for The Springville Herald is charged with improving the telemarketing process in order to increase the number of home-delivery subscriptions sold. After several brainstorming sessions, it was clear that the longer a caller speaks to a respondent, the greater the chance that the caller will sell a home-delivery subscription. Therefore, the team decided to find ways to increase the length of the phone calls.

Initially, the team investigated the impact that the time of a call might have on the length of the call. Under current arrangements, calls were made in the evening hours (between 5:00 pm and 9:00 pm, Monday through Friday). The team wanted to compare the length of calls made early in the evening (before 7:00 pm) with those made later in the evening (after 7:00 pm) to determine whether one of these time periods is more conducive to lengthier calls and, correspondingly, to increased subscription sales. The team selected a sample of 30 callers who staff the telephone bank on Wednesday evenings and randomly assigned 15 of them to the “early” group and 15 to the “later” group. The callers knew that the team was observing their efforts that evening but didn’t know which calls were monitored. The callers had been trained to make their telephone presentations in a structured manner. They were to read from a script, and their greeting was personal but informal (“Hi, this is Mary Jones from the Springville Herald. May I speak to Bill Richards?”)

Measurements were taken on the length of the call. The results are stored in “StatsII – Case Study – Telemarketing Data.xls” (which has been emailed to your Athens State University email accounts).

For your Case Study……

In document / report form (Microsoft Word), please ensure that the following ideas have been addressed:

(1) State the general purpose.

(2) State the null and alternative hypothesis (don’t forget about alpha).

(3) Assume that the distribution is normal.

(4) Discuss the mechanics of the analysis.

(5) Conclusion – Interpret the results of the hypothesis test in the appropriate context. In other words, do you reject the null hypothesis?.....do you fail to reject the null hypothesis?.....In “everyday words,” what does your conclusion indicate?

Early Phone Call length (in Minutes)    Late Phone Call length (in minutes)

41.3                                                              37.1

37.5                                                               38.9

39.3                                                               41.1

37.4                                                                45.7

33.6                                                                42.4

42.8                                                                 39

32.6                                                                  40.9

37.3                                                                  40.5

40.6                                                                  40.7

33.3                                                                   38

35.6                                                                   45.8

35.7                                                                   43.8

31.3                                                                   34.9

36.8                                                                   35.7

36.3                                                                   47.4

Solution