DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
MARKETING RESEARCH METHODS - MSCI 564 – 2019/2020
Individual Coursework
Our client is Cancer Research UK is a UK cancer research and awareness charity. The charity funds
research, works to discover new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer, develops cancer drugs
and treatments used globally, fundraises and organises campaigns (for more information visit
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/). All of this is possible only thanks to the generosity of the
supporters of this organisation.
Every year Cancer Research UK organises a direct-mail marketing campaign to attract supporters
and collect donations. Unfortunately, last year only 5% of those contacted by the charity made a
donation. The organisation needs your help in developing a model which will improve cost
effectiveness of their direct marketing campaign.
In order to help you with this task our client has prepared a dataset (file Charity.xlsx), which
represents a sample of responses from the most recent direct-mail campaign. The dataset contains
responses from 3120 individuals and was combined in such a way that it includes 50% of donors and
50% of those who didn’t respond to the campaign (the response variable is DONATION, =1 for
donors and 0 otherwise). For your information, the organisation also attached a small survey that
they sent to each of their potential supporters (file Questionnaire.pdf). Our client has also provided
you with additional data, although they are not sure whether this will be useful. This additional data
was added to the file Charity.xlsx and you can find the description of these variables on the sheet
called VariableDescription.
Based on the data that you were provided with, Cancer Research UK would like you to help them
understand who their potential donors are and how best to organise their direct marketing
campaign. They would also like to know in general, what the demographic and socioeconomic
variables that can help distinguish donors from non-donors are. Finally, based on their observations,
the client suspects that donation behaviour is different across regions of the UK. They have never
done any research to support this hypothesis and would appreciate your professional opinion on this
issue.
About the Report
You need to produce a report that is not more than 6 pages long (12pt font, 1.5 spaced). Please be
aware that in accordance with the University regulations a penalty will be applied to all reports that
exceed this page limit.
This report should be aimed at the head of the analytical team of the organisation with a very good
understanding of statistics, marketing analytics and modelling. Our client is looking for a report that
will answer their main questions, clearly and with adequate evidence. Given the limited resources of
the charity they really cannot waste it on a strategy the effectiveness of which is not supported by
statistical evidence. Therefore, please make sure that your analysis is adequately documented and
that you explain how you have manipulated / processed the data and why you have selected one
model or another.
Note that the report should consist of four parts:
1. Executive summary, briefly outlining the main findings and implications (your report should
start with it).
2. Preliminary data analysis.
3. Main part, which explains what model you decided to construct, why the selected model is
the most suitable and what the main findings based on that model are.
4. Recommendations based on your analysis. In this part, you are also asked to conduct the
critical analysis of the small survey that the charity sends to their potential supporters, giving
suggestions to our client how to improve the questionnaire in order to increase the response
rate (please make it brief: one, maximum two paragraphs long).
You will be assessed on the clarity of your report. Good structure and use of language are expected,
as well as good quality figures and tables.
Note: when preparing the report, please, make sure that you state clearly your library card number
on the title page and do not include your name in the submitted work.
Marks for the task
The marks are distributed as follows:
1. Executive summary – 5%;
2. Preliminary Data Analysis and Modelling sections – 60%;
3. Recommendations – 20%
4. Overall quality of the report – 15%.
Deadline: 13 May 2020, 10am
Good luck!