Question

Judy has been asked to give a presentation on customer satisfaction levels for the CVS stores in her district. The target provided by the corporate office is to have a minimum of 80% of customers “very satisfied”. As she is analyzing the data from the past month, she finds 1,689 out of a random sample of 2,346 customers indicated they are “very satisfied” with their experience at CVS. Judy is concerned because this sample proportion of 72% is below the benchmark provided by the corporate office, and she is in danger of receiving a reprimand, or worse, losing her job. She runs a one-sample z-test and finds a P-value of 0.72 when comparing her 72% to the 80% benchmark. This P-value is above 0.05, so she decides to go ahead and report that 80% of her customers are “very satisfied” and things are fine in her district.

(a) What is the ethical dilemma here?

(b) What are the undesirable consequences if Judy sticks with her decision?

(c) Who are the important stakeholders in this scenario?

(d) Provide an ethical solution to this situation that considers each scenario

Answer 1

The way to solve these type of problems is to not only use your statistical knowledge but also apply the same logically to the given situation

a) The ethical dilemma is that while the actual result states that 72% of customers are very satisifed but this result is below the benchmark of 80%, she risks being reprimanded or worse getting sacked. On the other hand if she goes with the one sample z-test which has predicted that there is no statistical difference then Judy gets to keep her job.

b)The undesirable consequences are that the result is not actually true so the company's reputation may take a hit and Judy may get sacked this time around for quoting wrong figures and jeopardising company's business.

c) The important stakeholders in this scenario are the company itself, Judy and the customers.

d) An ethical solution would be to take a larger sample and then compare her result since increasing sample size increases p-value and hence she can provide the correct result