Marketing Analytics – Homework 1
Individual Assignment
Due 1 PM, Tuesday September 10th
This assignment will improve your ability to work directly with real-world experimental data. In this assignment, you will be working with a dataset from a landmark study on the effectiveness of online search advertising. eBay conducted an experimental study to determine the return of its advertising on search engines including Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
You will be graded both on your code, and the written answers you provide. When evaluating the code, the grader will take on the role of an eBay co-worker. Code will be evaluated both in terms of how correct and how clear it is. By correctness, I mean that the code fulfills the requirements of the question. By clarity, I mean that the grader should be able to understand what your code does within 30 seconds of reading it. As discussed in class, this is aided by clear comments, good variable names, proper indentation, and short lines.
The written portions will be evaluated based on the strength of the arguments presented, the use of data to support your statements, and the quality of the writing.
All answers should be submitted using the posted Rmarkdown template. Open the .rmd file in R-Studio, and follow the directions listed there.
Assignment Materials for Download:
1. An Rmarkdown template titled ‘Homework1Template.Rmd’
2. A data file in .csv format titled ‘Homework 1 Data – 436.csv’
Submission Checklist:
To help us grade the assignments efficiently and correctly, we ask that you submit your assignments in a specific format. A complete submission for this assignment will send the following to [email protected]:
o A.rmdRmarkdownfile,basedonthetemplateforthisassignment.
o A .html file, generated by knitting the .rmd file in RStudio.
o All file names should be ‘[last name], [first name].[file extension]’, where you replace everything in the square brackets with the appropriate values.
Data Dictionary:
– date: Date of advertising
– DMA: Designated Market Area Code. Basically a city
– isTreatmentPeriod, isTreatmentGroup: Dummy variables denoting whether
date belonged to the treatment period, and DMA belonged to the treatment group
– revenue: Revenue for the DMA in dollars
Part 1: Analysis (16 marks)
The study was conducted as follows. Users were categorized by their designated market area (DMA), which is given as a categorical variable in Column 1 of the dataset. DMAs were randomly selected to be in the treatment and the control group. The variable ‘isTreatmentGroup’ indicates whether the DMA was placed in the treatment group. After a certain date, the treatment period started, the DMAs in the treatment group were no longer shown search ads from eBay. The variable ‘isTreatmentPeriod’ indicates whether the treatment period had started.
This analysis follows part of the study. Please do these questions in order. Download the Homework 1 dataset and save it to your computer. You can complete this section using Boolean variables, and the read.csv, lm, summary, subset, log, and nrow functions. As a reference, you can consult the ‘Interview Case’ presented in class.
a) Load the dataset in R. Hint: Use the read.csv function.
b) Write code that will display the first 10 rows of the dataset in the console. 2 marks.
c) Use the nrow function on the dataset to find out how many observations are in the dataset.
d) The data contains a control group, which was shown search ads throughout the data, and a treatment group, which was only shown search ads before the treatment period. 4 marks
i. Take a subset of all the data from the treatment group.
ii. Run a regression that compares log(revenue) of the treatment group in the
pre-treatment period and the treatment period. Hint: the independent variable
should be isTreatmentPeriod
iii. Get a summary of this regression
e) Now we will use the control group for a truly experimental approach. First, we will check to make sure that the randomization was done properly. 4 marks
i. Take a subset of all the data from the pre-treatment period
ii. Run a regression that compares log(revenue)of the treatment group and
the control group in the pre-treatment period.
iii. Get a summary of this regression
f) Now, using the post-treatment data, determine the effectiveness of eBay ads. Run a regression with log(revenue)as the dependent variable, and control for whether the DMAisthetreatmentgroup. Getasummaryofthisregression. 4marks
Part 2: Discussion (20 marks)
Please provide written answers to each of the following questions in the Rmarkdown file. Answers will be judged on the accuracy, and correct spelling/grammar. Pay close attention to what each question is asking for, and the course material. As a reference, you can consult the ‘Interview Case’ presented in class. Each answer only requires a short answer (3 short sentences max).
a) In part 1d, you ran the analysis without a control group. What do the resulting coefficient estimates say about the effectiveness of advertising? Be as specific as you can. The best answers to this question will quantify the effect in real terms, and take statistical uncertainty into account. 4 marks
b) What is the purpose of the randomization check in part 1e? What do the results of this analysis show? 4 marks
c) In part 1f, you ran the analysis with a control group, what do the resulting coefficient estimates say about the effectiveness of advertising? Be as specific as you can. The best answers to this question will quantify the effect in real terms, and take statistical uncertainty into account. 4 marks
d) What was the purpose of the control group here? What was unaccounted for in part 1d, but was accounted for in part 1f? 4 marks
e) Using the summary function, note the R-Squared of the regression in part 1f. Does this affect the interpretation or confidence in the estimate of the effectiveness of advertising? 4 marks
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