Chapter 12, Problem 2CP

Six months ago, Fuentes Salty Snacks, Inc., added a new flavor to its line of potato chips. The new flavor, candied bacon, was introduced through a nationwide rollout supported by an extensive promotional campaign. Fuentes’ management is convinced that quick penetration into grocery stores is a key to the successful introduction of a new salty snack product, and management now wants determine whether availability of Fuentes’ Candied Bacon Potato Chips is consistent in grocery stores across regions of the United States. The marketing department has selected random samples of 40 grocery stores in each of its eight U.S. sales regions:

• New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont)
• Mid-Atlantic (New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania)
• Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin)
• Great Plains (Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota Oklahoma, and South Dakota)
• South Atlantic (Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C.)
• Deep South (Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas)
• Mountain (Arizona, Colorado Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming)
• Pacific (Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington)

The stores in each sample were then contacted, and the manager of each store was asked whether the store currently carries Fuentes’ Candied Bacon Potato Chips. The complete data set is available in the file FuentesChips.

Fuentes’ senior management now wants to use these data to assess whether penetration of Fuentes’ Candied Bacon Potato Chips in grocery stores is consistent across its eight U.S. sales regions. If penetration of Fuentes’ Candied Bacon Potato Chips in grocery stores differs across its eight U.S. sales regions, Fuentes’ management would also like to identify sales regions in which penetration of Fuentes’ Candied Bacon Potato Chips is lower or higher than expected.

Managerial Report

Prepare a managerial report that addresses the following issues.

1. 1. Use descriptive statistics to summarize the data from Fuentes’ study. Based on your descriptive statistics, what are your preliminary conclusions about the penetration of Fuentes’ Candied Bacon Potato Chips in grocery stores across its eight U.S. sales regions?
2. 2. Use the data from Fuentes’ study to test the hypothesis that the proportion of grocery stores that currently carries Fuentes’ Candied Bacon Potato Chips is equal across its eight U.S. sales regions. Use α = .05.
3. 3. Do the results of your hypothesis test provide evidence that Fuentes’ Candied Bacon Potato Chips have penetrated grocery stores across its eight U.S. sales regions? In which sales region(s) is penetration of Fuentes’ Candied Bacon Potato Chips lower or higher than expected? Use the Marascuilo pairwise comparison procedure at α = .05 to test for differences between regions.