Data Visualization

1. Introduction

This report focuses on the factors that influence the sales revenue of Acell – a laptop selling company based in London. All of the data used for this report is based on a subset of the company’s laptop sales from January 2008 provided by ENBIS (the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics). The file included data like date of sale, retail price, laptop specifications, and customer locations but my analysis was mainly focused on sales and laptop prices in an effort to gather insights that will be useful to management in the decision making process for the 2009 operating year. I performed my analysis through a software called Tableau which allowed me to create the exhibits found throughout this report. I used data visualization tools like bar charts, histograms, and scatterplots to support and demonstrate my findings.

The objective of my analysis was to generate insights that would be useful for the management team during their decision making process. I wanted to document findings that would ultimately help Acell improve its pricing and product strategy to maximize projected revenue in the 2009 operating year. I believe that my calculations and charts will be useful for this purpose. However, it should be noted that all of my findings are based on data from a one month period. I believe that the analysis in this report could hint at useful trends but it should ultimately be paired with additional research before being used to make decisions. Some of the questions that I seek to answer in this report are multivariate by nature and all of my findings are limited to displaying the relationship between two variables. Nonetheless, my report will answer fundamental strategic management questions like what laptop price generates the most sales and which stores have the most customers.

2. Analysis

2.1 Average Price by Store

I began my analysis by plotting the average prices of a laptop in the given stores. The bar chart presented below in Exhibit 1 shows that all of the average prices in our stores are fairly similar. The highest average price was in store N17 6QA at £494.63 and the lowest average price was in store W4 3PH at £481.01. There is only a £13.62 differential which keeps all of the store locations competitive in price. However – it is important to note that this image only portrays the average prices of the laptops which is not an indication of store performance or revenue.

Exhibit 1

2.2 Price Distributions of Stores W4 3PH & N17 6QA

The two box and whisker plots shown in Exhibit 2 portray the laptop price distributions of stores N17 6QA and W4 3PH. Although the price distribution is slightly larger in store N17 6QA, the medians are very close and the variation of prices between the two stores is almost identical. Seeing as how N17 6QA has a median price of £495 and store W43 PH has a median price of £480 I can confidently say that the laptop prices are fairly consistent throughout the stores. Even when comparing the store with the highest average laptop price to the store with the lowest average laptop price, the medians are very similar.

Exhibit 2

2.3 Laptop Prices and Sales

By analyzing the data further, I found the Laptop prices that generate the most sales. The approximately normal histogram of sales shown in Exhibit 3 shows that a laptop price of £493 generated the most purchases at 1512 sales. Exhibit 4 also supports the data and further shows that the middle 50% of sales were between £495 and £525. It is also important to note that these figures only represent the relationship between laptop price and number of sales. It does not include the laptop configuration, cost of goods, or other factors that management may find useful in their decision making process.

Exhibit 3

Exhibit 4

2.4 Average Laptop Retail Price throughout January of 2008

Next, I analyzed the change in average retail price over 31 days. As shown in Exhibit 5, there is a downward sloping trend in average retail price as the days of the month go by. The average price seems to change frequently, almost daily, but the overall trend from this dataset seems to indicate that the average laptop price falls at the end of the month. It is important to note that this chart is based off of average retail price of all of the laptops within the store over time. It could be misleading