Per conversation with AlgebraExpert~Inferential Statistics and Findings

Introduction

The company that we chose was Pear, Inc., which is a pseudonym for Apple, Inc. In the assignment, the variables and the research question will be revealed as well as the hypothesis statements that have come about. The paper will also go in to more depth about the company and the main product the company sells and manufactures.

Variables

The desired relationship for analysis of the research project involving Pear, Inc. includes the salaries of all employees (dependent variable), and the amount of products sold (independent variable). The question that needs to be answered is: Is there a correlation between the salaries of all employees (dependent variable) based on the amount of product sold (independent variable)?

Pear, Inc.’s Scenario

For the purpose of developing a research question, we have selected a hypothetical company called Pear, Inc. to develop scenarios analyze. Pear, Inc. concentrates on manufacturing and selling top of the line electronics, including laptops to cellphones. Software production is another department that Pear, Inc. emphasizes on. The operating system that Pear, Inc. developed is called “The Pear Operating System” and is comparable to other software. Sales is a department that is highly focused on in order to make the product known to the public and to remain competitive against other companies. Sales departments are established across the country to attract consumers and to provide opportunities for customers to try the products before making a decision to purchase Pear's electronic products. Sales personnel are highly experienced in performing direct sales and internet sales. Along with excellent benefit packages, the level of experience and qualification of an employee determine salaries. The managers are formulating a research question whether all the employee salaries have a direct correlation with the amount of sales of products. Our managers have formed into a team to work on the research question. Each team member will be concentrating on specified areas as identifying the organization, selecting variables, developing scenarios, developing a research question and creating a hypothesis statements.

Hypothesis Statements

At Pear, Inc., the salaries of employees is being examined with respect to the amount of products being sold. Our hypothesis statements are:

· H0: There is no correlation between the salaries of Pear, Inc. employees and the amount of products sold.

· H1: There is a correlation between the salaries of Pear, Inc. employees and the amount of products sold.

These hypothesis statements represent a possible correlation, since both variables are numeric and quantitative.

Conclusion

It is determined that Pear, Inc. will be used for the research question. This company is a large electronics company that is highly dependent on the sales department. The research question that has been developed includes the salaries of the sales employees and the correlation of the amount of products sold. The hypothesis statements show the possible correlation between salaries and the amount of product sold.

This article discusses the amount of developer positions available compared to the amount of software engineers to fill them. All across the world the gap between the two increases. “Remaining fears on the part of some students and their parents about IT job security after the dot-com fallout—while unwarranted—are negatively affecting software engineering enrollments, which will also temporarily widen the gap. (Geer, 2006, p.112). While companies continue to lead the pathway in technology software engineer positions will decrease.

Motivating and Keeping Software Developers

This article discusses quality measurements to use when motivating and keeping software developers. The author emphasis the use of annual salary surveys. “If you fail to recognize and react to market trends, you will lose key developers” (Whitaker, 1997, p.127). There are wrong ways and right ways when it comes to rewarding your employees. Dealing with software timetables can play a factor so one will not want to offer an incentive prior to the software being developed.

2008 Salary Report

This survey discusses the comparison of Engineering Workforce Commission data from the last five annual salary surveys. “According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the chemical industries boasted the second brightest outlook of any category of employer, being exceeded only by computer-software-development companies” (Torzewski, 2008, p. 1). The article discusses how the slowing economy as well as foreign markets experiencing the same slowing, could negatively impact the computer-software-development companies.

AIChe salary research survey

A survey about chemical engineers salaries across continents and categorized with level of education as in terms of bachelors, masters and PH.D. Different age group is added in to the sample because age does play in determining the level of experience in the field. Salaries according to employee and employer characteristics are also taken in to account and are expressed in medians. Samples were collected from all members across the world using their e-mail addresses who are mostly AIche members. “Members residing outside the United States or over the age of 70 were excluded from the original sample frame” ( 2009 AIChE salary survey, 2009, Para 27). Not all members participated in the salary research survey.

Turning point analysis article

This survey was about the different survey methods used by Universities across the nation about revenue predictions for each States. “This article reviews many of the national forecasting models examining consumer sentiment currently in use. And it compares the Utah experience with surveys used in other states” (MacDonald & Haggard, 1990, Para 1). Consumer sentiment indices are added in to look for any changes in wages.

Organizational survey non-response

This article was about organizations non-response that predicts organizational behaviors and different variables are used in analyzing the samples. “Analysis identifies a series of organizational sources of non-response that have clear consequences for final sample bias” (Tomaskovic-Devey, Leiter & Thompson, 1994).

Productivity in the retail industry

In this study, Vasanthakumar Bhat studied the ownership of shares by corporate insiders was analyzed and compared with the success of the retail industries they are from. The study included the assets and sales as the inputs, and the income and stock market values as outputs. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was used to the performance, efficiencies, and relationships between the inputs and outputs with the insiders’ ownership. As a result, Bhat saw high correlations of the insider holdings and the efficiency of the constant returns to scale, as well as with the efficiency of the total earning assets (Bhat, 2008). These relationships represent that there are other portions of the company that deduct and add to the income of employees, and it also varies if the higher executives are corporate insiders as well.

How Much is the Average Salary of an Apple Employee?

In this article from John Brownlee of the Cult of Mac website, the average salaries for Apple employees are discussed. Since Pear, Inc. is in the same industry as Apple, the jobs and salaries are relatively comparable. According to Brownlee, the employees of Apple who sell the products make significantly less than engineers, designers, and higher up executives (Brownlee, 2012). For example, an Apple Store Genius only makes about $38,000 a year, where a Systems Engineer makes over $94,000 a year. The Geniuses are the ones selling the products, but do not receive a commission on any sales.

If You Want to Get Rich, Work for These Companies

Even though the lower pay at Apple is a bit of a letdown, Calio, Frohlich, Hess, and McIntyre explain in the 24/7 WallSt article that technology companies are one of the best paying industries to be a part of (Calio, Frohlich, Hess, & McIntyre, 2014). The median annual salary at Apple is over $123,000, and even though sales do not affect the salary of sales associates, it does affect the amount executives get.

The Strategic Sales Organization

There is new evidence showing that the important decisions of a company that are associated with the marketing strategies are being made in the sales department. Many companies are using the sales department and employees to help put together the marketing strategies of the company. When it comes to knowing and understanding the needs of buyers, companies are finding that the sales organizations can predict what the buyer wants better than the marketing department. “It is likely that one of the developing roles of the strategic sales organization will be in managing processes of customer value definition, development and delivery that cut across functional interfaces to build real customer focus.” (Piercy, 2006)

The Effect of Product Sales Quotas on Sales Force Productivity

Salary plus benefits: Looking at the whole package

When looking at the salary of an employee it is important to look at the entire package that is included in the employee’s benefits. There may be things that are overlooked when salaries are being looked at. There may be things such as bonuses, overtime, health insurance and retirement plans. Not all salaries are just the base salary of the employee it is also the benefits that are included. Employees need to look at the benefits and extras they receive when it comes to a job and not just the salary.

Many companies use the benefits to entice employees to come and work for them. “A standard benefit package usually includes a specified number of days for paid vacation, illness or personal use for doctor's appointments, jury duty, funerals, or military leave. Life insurance, medical coverage with or without dental and vision plans, and a retirement savings plan round out the standard package.” (Neuman, 1998). It is important for employees to know and understand what other benefits they will receive with their salary before making a decision of what company they want to work for.

Employee involvement and organizational effectiveness

In this study, they wanted to find out to what degree the employees had on the company’s profitability, productivity, and market share. They did a cross sectional survey with a population of 388 managers randomly drawn from a population size of 13,339 managers of all the 24 banks in Nigeria (Amah & Ahiauzu, 2013). The independent variable, “employee involvement” orientation, and capacity development, and is the dependent variable, “organizational effectiveness” was measured by profitability, productivity, and market share (Amah & Ahiauzu, 2013). The results showed that the employees were affected the business production.

The Product-Price Nexus and Social Relations

This study was to prove the product price nexus it is said that there is see a relationship between products and their prices that is inversely correlated to the level of social interaction between customer and bartenders at and New Your Bar and a bar in Australia (Burgess, 2013). It was found that the bar in New York had a weaker PPN Due to the fact that there were less structured rules and things were no formal as with the bar in Australia the rules for that bar were more structure. The bartenders had to keep the interaction to a minimum. This was said to give the customer a better sense of trust, and that is why the bar in Australia had a higher PPN. Even with the fact that the bar in New York had higher wages and they had higher tips from the customers.

Designing Distribution system of rewards and influence on Employees Satisfaction Case Study

This article was about minimizing job dissatisfaction through a coordinated system of payment in order to increase employees' satisfaction and productivity in Hamgamkhodro, Asia factory (Niki & Nili, 2012). The article talked about how the productivity of the company had increased after the system had been put into place. The theory was simple: as the employee’s skill increased, so did the reward, such as how much they were getting paid. This is something very common in the United States that is not done there. They were surprised by the outcome. The labor cost they found out was directly related to their sales so happy employees more sales.

Revised Research Question

Is there a correlation between the salaries of all employees (dependent variable) based on the amount of product sold (independent variable)?

Sampling and data collection plan

Population and Size

Pear, Inc. is a large company with many employees throughout the world. The population for this sampling and data collection plan is going to be the sales employees of Pear, Inc. All the information that will be collected will involve all sales employees that work for Pear, Inc. This means that the target population for this research question will also be the sales employees. The reason for this being the target population is the fact that the sales employees will be the only ones whose salaries would affect the amount of products that may be sold. Since there is a large number of employees, not all sales employees will be used for the data that will be tested. There will only be a certain amount of the sales employees that will be randomly selected for the research survey. The amount of employees that will be selected for the research survey will be determined by a systematic sampling method.

Sample Collection

Sampling is one of the factors that need carefully consideration in conducting a research study if it is focused on a specific group of people belonging to certain job title so accurate measurements can be made. For Pear, Inc. a systematic sampling method will be used to collect samples for the research to test our research hypothesis. Employees from the sales departments will be concentrated mostly in collecting the samples so systematic method is the best approach in collecting data from a large pool of employees. Information regarding employee names and position will be collected from company human resources department. Pear, Inc. holds more than 35,000 employees located across the nation offering their excellent customer service all around the world. Invitation regarding the participation of taking part in the survey will sent to all selected employees via their company e-mail. Selected employees are expected to participate, but if there is a shortage, additional selected samples will be added to meet the calculated sample size. Sample size will be 385 based on 95% confidence level with 5% error margin. Calculation is added in Appendix B.

Data Collection

The survey that will be given to each subject is in Appendix A. The employee survey on SuveryMonkey will be provided on a private computer in a single room, without the presence of anyone else. Once completed by all employees, SurveyMonkey will prepare a report of the relevant data for the company to prove or disprove that the null hypothesis is true. Using SurveyMonkey is the best way to collect data from our 385 subjects in the sample size calculated, since it is a large sample to test.

Data mining

Data mining will be done for the production of the product. The data mining may have to go back four years to get a clear picture. The Items that will be looked at will be sales reports, stockholders reports, production lines reports and different analysis at different times of the year when raises were given as compared to when they were not. This information will also be selected at random from each year, the years will be from 2009 till 2013.

In order for this to have validity and reliability the goal that we have must be clearly defined and adhered to. According "Know This.com" (2014), “To those evaluating research results should keep asking this simple question: Is the research measuring what it is supposed to measure? We would also like to have an outside party look over the study to get feedback. According to ("Know This.com" (2014),“For some types of research this can be measured by having different researchers follow the same methods to see if results can be duplicated. If results are similar then, it is likely the method of data gathering is reliable.”

Appendix A

Employee Survey

1. What is your position at Pear, Inc.?

2. Do you work selling products directly to customers for Pear, Inc.?

3. How long have you been in the sales department with Pear, Inc.?

4. Do you sell more than one product at least 75% of the time?

5. Where does your salary rank on this scale?

a. $0-20,999/year

b. $21,000-35,999/year

c. $36,000-40,999/year

d. $41,000-45,999/year

e. $46,000+/year

6. Do you believe you are properly compensated with respect to how many products your company sells annually?

Appendix B

Sample Size Calculation:

Necessary Sample Size = (Z-score)² – Standard Deviation*(1-Standard Deviation) / (margin of error)²

((1.96)² x .5(.5)) / (.05)²

(3.8416 x .25) / .0025=

.9604 / .0025=

384.16≈ 385 employees

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Burgess, J. F. (2013). The product-price nexus and social relations. Human Organization, 72(1), 76.

Calio, V., Frohlich, T. C., Hess, A. E., McIntyre, D. A. (22 March 2014). If you want to get rich, work for these companies. 24/7 WallSt Website. Retrieved from http://247wallst.com/special-report/2014/03/18/the-15-highest-paying-companies-in-america/.

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