Question

Farming with AgriPro (Case Study)

AgriPro is a firm based in Colorado, USA, which does research on and produces genetically modified wheat seed. Every year AgriPro conducts thousands of experiments on different varieties of wheat seeds in different locations of the USA. In these experiments, the agricultural and economic characteristics, regional adaptation, and yield potential of different varieties of wheat seeds are investigated. In addition, the benefits of the wheat produced, including the milling and baking quality, are examined. If a new variety of wheat seed with superior characteristics is identified, AgriPro produces and markets it throughout the USA and parts of Canada. AgriPro’s product is sold to farmers through their distributors, known in the industry as growers. Growers buy wheat seed from AgriPro, grow wheat, harvest the seeds, and sell the seed to local farmers, who plant them in their fields. These growers also provide the farmers who buy their seeds with expert local knowledge on management and the environment. AgriPro sells its products to these growers in several geographically defined markets. These markets are geographically defined because different local conditions (soil, weather, and local plant diseases) force AgriPro to produce different products. One of these markets, the heartland region of the USA is an important market for AgriPro, but the company has been performing below management expectations in these markets. The heartland region includes the states of Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Illinois, and Kentucky. To help AgriPro understand more about farming in the heartland region, they commissioned a marketing research project among farmers in these states. AgriPro, together with a marketing research firm, designed a survey, which included questions on what farmers who decide to plant wheat find important, how they obtain information on growing and planting wheat, what is important in their purchasing decision, and their loyalty to and sa:sfaction with the top five wheat suppliers (including AgriPro). In addition, questions were asked about how many acres of farmland the respondents possessed, how much wheat they planted, how old they were, and their level of education. This survey was mailed to 650 farmers selected from a commercial list that includes nearly all farmers in the heartland region. In all, 150 responses were received, resulting in a 23% response rate. The marketing research firm also assisted AgriPro to assign variable names and labels. They did not delete any questions or observations due to nonresponse to items. Page 2 of 3 your task is to analyze the dataset further and provide the management of AgriPro with advice based on the dataset. This dataset is labeled AgriPro Wheat Farming DataSet Excel and it available on Moodle. The first raw of the excel sheet contains the variable names and labels that you can match with those in the survey as you can see in Appendix A. The original survey is also on Moodle. To help you with this task, a number of questions have been prepared by AgriPro that they would like to see answered:

1. Produce appropriate descriptive statistics for each item in the dataset. Consider descriptive statistics that provide useful information in a succinct way. In addition, produce several descriptive statistics on the demographic variables in the dataset, using appropriate charts and/or graphs.

2. Are there any outliers in the data? What (if any) observa:ons do you consider to be outliers and what would you do with these?

3. Is there any missing data? What do you decide to handle the missing data?

4. What are the most common reasons for farmers to plant wheat? From which source are farmers most likely to seek information on wheat? Is this source also the most reliable one?

5. Consider the five brands included in the dataset. Describe how these brands compare on quality, advice provided, and farmer loyalty.

6. How satisfied are the farmers with the brand’s distributors?

7. AgriPro expects that farmers who are more satisfied with their products devote a greater percentage of the total number of acres available to them to wheat. Please test this assumption by using regression analysis.

8. Is there a relationship between farmers’ satisfaction with AgriPro and the respondent’s educational level, age, and number of acres of farmland? Conduct a regression analysis with all these four variables. How do these results relate to question 7?

9. What is the relationship between the quality of AgriPro seed and the satisfaction with AgriPro?

10. As AgriPro’s consultant, and based on the empirical findings of this study, what marketing advice would you have for AgriPro’s marketing team? Provide four or five carefully thought through suggestions as bullet points.

Source: Mooi, E., Sarstedt, M., & Mooi-Reci, I. (2018). The Market Research Process. In Market Research (pp. 11-25). Springer, Singapore.

please advice how i can upload the excel sheet?

Answer 1

Hi,

All these questions can only be answered if you give the supporting data. You can take screenshots of the excel sheet and upload them. One can give you commands that you should run on excel to answer these questions.

Hope that helps