BUAD801 Decision Support Tools and Techniques Assignment 1 2025-26 | AIS

Business Administration Programmes Assignment 1   

Course: BUAD801 Decision Support Tools and Techniques  

POINTS to NOTE:

1. There are 100 marks for this assignment which is 25% of the final course grade. 
2. The word limit for this assignment is 2,500 words (+/-10%), excluding references, figures, tables, and appendixes. 
3. Use Arial or Times New Roman font size 12 and 1.5 line spacing.  
4. Ensure you follow academic citation and referencing requirements, as failure to do so may invoke penalties. Use APA (7th ed.). A reference list is required. 
5. You are also required to reference the use of any tools/software/application used. This includes the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to paraphrase or proofread, which requires a statement where applicable. 
6. Upon submission your assignment will be checked for copied materials as well as the use of AI (artificial intelligence), with penalties to be applied where appropriate and if not appropriately referenced.    
7. You may submit your assignment as a draft submission (Moodle/Turnitin) to check similarity prior to making your final submission.  
8. Late submissions incur a 5% penalty (5 marks) for each 24-hour period up to 96 hours (after that time, your mark will be recorded as zero). 
9. An extension may be granted if, within the prescribed timeframe, you submit an 'Assignment Extension Application' form with supporting documentation (e.g., a medical certificate) to the Programme Administration Unit. 
10. As part of pass requirements for this course, you are required to pass each learning outcome at least once in this course. 

Learning Outcomes:

As set out in your Course Outline, this assignment requires you to:  

• LO2 Effectively correlate data to construct various graphs in order to select appropriagte quantitative tools.  
• LO3 Demonstrates analytical skills for managerial decision-making by evaluating and interpreting business scenarios.; and  
• LO4 Apply calculations using appropriate instruments to distinguish between using forecasting and regression tools.

BUSINESS SCENARIO

A New Zealand company specialising in distributing goods to consumers is looking to expand its activity internally or externally (outside New Zealand). The management team of this company needs to look at the feasibility of that expansion by using quantitative analysis for some economic indicators.

The two alternative scenarios are: 

1.expand in New Zealand; or  
2.establish a new division in another country.  
Five economic indicators are selected to analyse and help in making decisions.  
a.GDP per head 
b.Imports goods growth rate 
c.Export good growth rate 
d.Growth rate of GDP private final consumption expenditure  
e.Unemployment population 

Quarterly data for the period 2016 Q3- 2023 Q3 was extracted from https://stats.oecd.org for each of the above five variables for all OECD countries and made available to you (available on the BUAD801 Moodle page).  
You have been asked to select a country (with the approval of your lecturer) and prepare a report using a quantitative analysis approach to help the management in their decision-making.

As part of the report, you are required to:

1. Create appropriate graphs to correlate the five (5) variables above for the selected country and interpret the graphs you create. Select appropriate quantitative tools and apply them to examine the trend, distribution, and stability for each of the five (5) variables. Provide an interpretation of the results and justify these results in terms of helping decision-making. (20 marks)       
2. Conduct an analysis to look at the relationship between the five (5) above variables for the selected country, interpret the measures that indicate the significance of the analysis, and evaluate the importance of the analysis for the decision-maker.   (25 marks) 
3. Forecast for the period (2023Q4 -2025Q3) for each of the five variables and provide an interpretation of the outcomes to support managerial decisions.
4. Distinguish between the forecasting method you applied, and the regression analysis used in requirement two using the calculation you performed in the two analyses. (10 marks)   
5. Compare the New Zealand statistical analysis supplied to you (on Moodle as an Excel worksheet in the assessment section) with the statistical analysis for your selected country in terms of the significance of the analysis used in both countries and evaluate the two alternatives’ scenarios with justification using the quantitative analysis. Provide management with your outlined recommendation using appropriate statistical language. (25 marks)  
6. Use appropriate academic writing conventions (5 marks)  

The Excel worksheet (for the selected country) must be uploaded as a separate file with the raw data table for your selected country.