Food Prices in Stores Kroger and Giant Eagle - Case Study Example

Name Instructor’s name Institution Subject Project – Food Prices The Problem There has been an argument over time that there is always a change in prices of items depending on the location where one does their shopping. The notion has therefore led to the need to find out whether this argument is true; if goods have differences and therefore the need to establish what differences if any that exists between the a groceries. This will in turn help in making an informed choice on where to go do the shopping; that is favorable in price among those that reside in my area. This led me to select two stores; Kroger and Giant Eagle. The data on the prices of different food items was collected on different occasions but there are two prices that represent the price of a given similar food items. This data is to compare whether there is a difference in price for the same food items in two different grocery stores. Observations For all the fifteen items under analysis, the difference in prices does not exceed one dollar while at the same time; the difference does not go below 10 cents. This means that the prices are of a fare range among the two grocery stores under analysis despite them having the difference. The highest difference in price is seen on the Cat food and Tofu where the Kroger Store sells the Cat food at 7.99 dollars while the Giant Eagle sells this item at 8.49 dollars. Tofu is sold by the two stores at 2.5 dollars and 2.99 dollars respectively. The Cat Food makes top of the list as the item which was highly priced in both the stores among the 15 food items that we have under analysis. On the other hand, among the 15 food items under analysis Reese’s Cups makes the lowest priced food item in both the stores selling at 0.25 and 0.35 dollars for Kroger and Giant Eagle respectively. .NO FOOD ITEMS KROGER GIANT EAGLE 1 Cookies 2.69 2.5 2 Soy milk 3.19 2.99 3 Gum 0.99 1.09 4 Yogurt 0.63 0.4 5 Protein Bar 1.25 1.09 6 Paper towels 1.19 1.09 7 Coffee cake 3.49 3.29 8 Tofu 2.5 2.99 9 1 gallon water 0.89 0.79 10 Tomato sauce 3.99 4.25 11 Spaghetti 1.19 1 12 Cat food 7.99 8.49 13 2L Soda 1 0.89 14 Reese’s cups 0.25 0.35 15 Coffee 4.99 4.69 The Cat Food makes top of the list as the item which was highly priced in both the stores among the 15 food items that we have under analysis. On the other hand, among the 15 food items under analysis Reese’s Cups makes the lowest priced food item in both the stores selling at 0.25 and 0.35 dollars for Kroger and Giant Eagle respectively. The food items with the lowest margin in difference are Soy Milk, Paper Towels, 1 Gallon water and Reese’s cups all having a difference of 10 cents. The difference is not found on one Grocery store but we find that the differences vary from one store to the other, i.e. while the Soy milk is higher at Kroger than it is in Giant Eagle; Reese’s Cups are higher at Giant Eagle that they are in Kroger store. For this study, the food items are the dependent variables meaning that they are bound to change; e.g. the prices have shown that they vary from one store to the other while the Independent variable here is the food items. They do not change in any way in the two stores. According to the data we collected on the two Grocery stores, it is clear that the cost of the food items at the Kroger store is higher than the cost of the food items at the Giant Eagle grocery store. This can be seen from the fact that the total cost of the items at Kroger is 36.23 dollars while the price of the fifteen food items at Giant Eagle is 35.9 dollars. This shows a difference of 0.23 dollars depicting that the price of the food items is higher at Kroger than it is in Giant Eagle. The data below is a representation of the raw data as collected from the two Grocery Stores Kroger and Giant Eagle. The data above is from independent samples which in this case are the food items. The table below is a frequency distribution for Kroger Grocery store. We arranged the data into a class of grouped data so as to achieve the frequency in the prices of the different food items. Below is the frequency distribution table Kroger Grocery store Price Frequency 0 – 1.0 5 1.1 – 2.0 3 2.1 – 3.0 2 3.1 – 4.0 3 4.1 – 5.0 1 5.1 – 6.0 0 6.1 – 7.0 0 7.1 – 8.0 0 8.1 – 9.0 1 Below is the Frequency Distribution Table for the Giant Eagle Grocery Store. It shows how the prices of the different food items are distributed and their frequency as per the grouped prices also the Histogram that shows the representation of the data for analysis. Price Frequency 0 – 1.0 5 1.1 – 2.0 3 2.1 – 3.0 2 3.1 – 4.0 3 4.1 – 5.0 1 5.1 – 6.0 0 6.1 – 7.0 0 7.1 – 8.0 0 8.1 – 9.0 1 The given data represents the prices of 15 food items. These food items randomly sampled from the two different grocery stores independently. The name of the grocery stores one is Kroger and the other one is Giant Eagle. The prices of the food items in each stores entered in the Excel data editor for further analysis. And below is the representation of the raw data in a graph showing how the two prices of the same food items differ in the two grocery stores; Kroger and Giant Eagle. The total cost of the fifteen food items at the kroger grocery store is 36.23 dollars making the men price of the food items to stand at 2.42 dollars. On the other hand, the total cost for the same food items at the Giant Eagle grocery store is 35.90 dollars while the average price was 2.39 dollars. The representation above clearly depicts Kroger as the grocery that has the prices of the food items being sold higher since it has three quarters of the items under analysis being sold at a higher price than that at the Giant Eagle Grocery Store. The Distribution With skewness being the measure of symmetry or the lack of it (symmetry), the distribution of this data set lacks symmetry since it inclines itself more to the left for both the Kroger and Giant Eagle grocery stores. This in essence can be explained by that the prices of most of the commodities fall between the ranges of 1 – 5 dollars. Most of the food items do not fall outside this bracket. There is a positive skewness for this data. The price which is a variable for this analysis has value that is not exceeded in the two groceries. For instances, despite the fact that the prices of the food items change depending on the grocery, the change is marginal such that one grocery does not overprice a given item as the other sells it at a relatively lower price. Much as the price varies, there is little variation for the prices. Measure of Central Tendency Measures of central tendency are a measure that tells where for instance the middle of a sample of data lies. There are three common measures of central tendency which are; the mean, the mode and the median. For this data, one of the measures of central tendency that is important is or that was best to describe the data was the mean. With the mean, we are able to know what the average price for the 15 food items in the two different stores was and with this mean we are able to know which of the stores has its prices higher than the other. With the mean as the best measure of central tendency that best describes the data, we were able to reach to the conclusion that it is more expensive to shop from the Kroger Grocery store than it is at the Giant Eagle. Expectations When starting the study, we were of the expectations that there would be differences in prices on the various food items. One thing that was not found and that formed part of the expectations is the fact that there are not food items of the fifteen under analysis that had the prices being similar in the two grocery stores. We expected that the stores would have certain food items have a similar cost which was not the case. Moreover, we expected that the Giant eagle would emerge to be the more expensive grocery store due to its vast expansiveness. But to the surprise it was Kroger that emerged to be the more expensive. Conclusion While trying to do the analysis of the data, we will discuss it in terms of descriptive and inferential statistics. The descriptive statistics describes the centre, shape and how the data spreads. Inferential statistics on the other hand allows the use of the information that is contained in the sample data to be able to expand our knowledge range of the sample being sampled. For this case, having studied the difference in the prices of the food items in the two grocery stores that is the Kroger and Giant Eagle it comes to our knowledge that the Giant Eagle is the favorite Grocery store to shop from since it offers competitive prices than the Kroger Grocery store whose prices are higher. The study answers the big question we had at the start of the study which can be used by a shopper who wishes to shop in either of two stores make an informed choice since he knows how the prices vary between the two grocery stores. On the other hand depending on how much they maybe will to spend at a single shopping of an item, they are able to know where to go buy the item from. Read More