INTRODUCTION

The first determination in any survey design is "What is to be measured?" Although our problem statement or research question will inform us as to the concept that is to be investigated, it often does not say anything about the measurement of that concept. Let us assume we are evaluating the sales performance of group sales representatives. We could define their success in numerical terms such as dollar value of sales or unit sales volume or total passengers. We could even express it in share of sales or share of accounts lost. But we could also measure more subjective factors such as satisfaction or performance influencers. In conclusive research (definition of conclusive research), where we rely on quantitative techniques (definition of quantitative research), the objective is to express in numeric terms the difference in responses. Hence, a scale is used to represent the item being measured in the spectrum of possibilities. The values assigned in the measuring process can then be manipulated according to certain mathematical rules. There are four basic types of scales which range from least to most sophisticated for statistical analysis.

What is measurement?
Measurement is at the core of doing research. Measurement is the assignment of numbers to things. In almost all research, everything has to be reduced to numbers eventually. Precision and exactness in measurement are vitally important. The measures are what are actually used to test the hypotheses. A researcher needs good measures for both independent and dependent variables. Measurement consists of two basic processes called conceptualization and operationalization, then an advanced process called determining the levels of measurement, and then even more advanced methods of measuring reliability and validity. This lecture will take up each of these processes in turn.

Conceptualization
1

Conceptualization is the process of taking a construct or concept and refining it by giving it a conceptual or theoretical definition. Ordinary dictionary definitions will not do. Instead, the researcher takes keywords in their research question or hypothesis and finds a clear and consistent definition that is agreed-upon by others in the scientific community. Sometimes, the researcher pushes the envelope by coming up with a novel conceptual definition, but such initiatives are rare and require the researcher to have intimate familiarity with the topic. More common is the process by which a researcher notes agreements and disagreements over conceptualization in the literature review, and then comes down in favor of someone else's conceptual definition. It's perfectly acceptable in science to borrow the conceptualizations and operationalizations of others. Conceptualization is often guided by the theoretical framework, perspective, or approach the researcher is committed to. For example, a researcher operating from within a Marxist framework would have quite different conceptual definitions for a hypothesis about social class and crime than a non-Marxist researcher. That's because there are strong value positions in different theoretical perspectives about how some things should be measured. Most criminal justice researchers at this point will at least decide what type of crime they're going to study.

Operationalization
Operationalization is the process of taking a conceptual definition and making it more precise by linking it to one or more specific, concrete indicators or operational definitions. These are usually things with numbers in them that reflect empirical or observable reality. For example, if the type of crime one has chosen to study is theft (as representative of crime in general), creating an operational definition for it means at least choosing between petty theft and grand theft (false taking of less or more than $150). I don't want to give the impression from this example that researchers should rely upon statutory or legal definitions. Some researchers do, but most often, operational definitions are also borrowed or created anew. They're what link the world of ideas to the world of everyday reality. It's more important that ordinary people would agree on your indicators than other scientists or legislators, but again, avoid dictionary definitions. If you were to use legalistic definitions, then it's your duty to provide what is called an auxiliary theory, which is a justification for the research utility of legal hairsplitting (as in why less or more than $150 is of theoretical significance). The most important thing to remember at this point, however, is your unit of analysis. You want to make absolutely sure that everything you reduce down is defined at the same unit of analysis:
2

societal, regional, state, communal, individual, to name a few. You don't want to end up with a research project that has to collect political science data, sociological data, and psychological data. In most cases, you should break it all down so that each variable is operationally defined at the same level of thought, attitude, trait, or behavior, although some would call this psychological reductionism and are more comfortable with group-level units or psychological units only as a proxymeasure for more abstract, harder-to-measure terms.

LEVELS OF MEASUREMENT
A level of measurement is the precision by which a variable is measured. For 50 years, with few detractors, science has used the Stevens (1951) typology of measurement levels. There are three things to remember about this typology: (1) anything that can be measured falls into one of the four types; (2) the higher the type, the more precision in measurement; and (3) every level up contains all the properties of the previous level. The four levels of measurement, from lowest to highest, are:

Nominal Ordinal Interval

3

Ratio

NOMINAL SCALE
At the nominal scale, i.e., for a nominal category, one uses labels; for example, rocks can be generally categorized as igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. For this scale, some valid operations are equivalence and set membership. Nominal measures offer names or labels for certain characteristics. Variables assessed on a nominal scale are called categorical variables; see also categorical data. Stevens (1946, p. 679) must have known that claiming nominal scales to measure obviously non-quantitative things would have attracted criticism, so he invoked his theory of measurement to justify nominal scales as measurement: the use of numerals as names for classes is an example of the assignment of numerals according to rule. The rule is: Do not assign the same numeral to different classes or different numerals to the same class. Beyond that, anything goes with the nominal scale. The central tendency of a nominal attribute is given by its mode; neither the mean nor the median can be defined. We can use a simple example of a nominal category: first names. Looking at nearby people, we might find one or more of them named Aamir. Aamir is their label; and the set of all first names is a nominal scale. We can only check whether two people have the same name (equivalence) or whether a given name is in on a certain list of names (set membership), but it is impossible to say which name is greater or less than another (comparison) or to measure the difference between two names. Given a set of people, we can describe the set by its most common name (the mode), but cannot provide an "average name" or even the "middle name" among all the names. However, if we decide to sort our names alphabetically (or to sort them by length; or by how many times they appear in the US Census), we will begin to treat this nominal scale into an ordinal scale.

Following example illustrates What is your gender? [ ] Male [ ] Female Another example is - a survey of retail stores done on two dimensions - way of maintaining stocks and daily turnover. How do you stock items at present? [ ] By product category [ ] At a centralized store [ ] Department wise [ ] Single warehouse Daily turnover of consumer is? [ ] Between 100 200 [ ] Between 200 300 [ ] Above 300 A two way classification can be made as follows Daily/Stock Turnover

Product Department Centralized Single Warehouse

Category wise Store Method 100 200 200 300 Above 300 Mode is frequently used for response category.

ORDINAL SCALE
Rank-ordering data simply puts the data on an ordinal scale. Ordinal measurements describe order, but not relative size or degree of difference between the items measured. In this scale type, the numbers assigned to objects or events represent the rank order (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) of the entities assessed. A scale may also use names with an order such as: "bad", "medium",
5

and "good"; or "very satisfied", "satisfied", "neutral", "unsatisfied", "very unsatisfied." An example of an ordinal scale is the result of a horse race, which says only which horses arrived first, second, or third but include no information about race times. Another is the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, which characterizes the hardness of various minerals through the ability of a harder material to scratch a softer one, saying nothing about the actual hardness of any of them. When using an ordinal scale, the central tendency of a group of items can be described by using the group's mode (or most common item) or its median (the middle-ranked item), but the mean (or average) cannot be defined. Intelligence quotient (IQ) scores reflect an ordinal scale, in which all scores are only meaningful for comparison, rather than an interval scale, in which a given number of IQ "points" corresponds to a unit of intelligence.[2][3][4] Thus it is an error to write that an IQ of 160 is just as different from an IQ of 130 as an IQ of 100 is different from an IQ of 70.[5][6] In mathematical order theory, an ordinal scale defines a total preorder of objects (in essence, a way of sorting all the objects, in which some may be tied). The scale values themselves (such as labels like "great", "good", and "bad"; 1st, 2nd, and 3rd) have a total order, where they may be sorted into a single line with no ambiguities. If numbers are used to define the scale, they remain correct even if they are transformed by any monotonically increasing function. This property is known as the order isomorphism. A simple example follows: Judge's x Alice's cooking ability Bob's cooking ability Claire's cooking ability Dana's cooking ability Edgar's cooking ability 10 9 8.5 8 5 score Score minus 8 Tripled x-8 2 1 0.5 0 -3 3x 30 27 25.5 24 15 score Cubed x3 1000 729 614.125 512 125 score

Since x-8, 3x, and x3 are all monotonically increasing functions, replacing the ordinal judge's score by any of these alternate scores does not affect the relative ranking of the five people's cooking abilities. Each column of numbers is an equally legitimate ordinal scale for
6

describing their abilities. However, the numerical (additive) difference between the various ordinal scores has no particular meaning. Example 1: Rank the following attributes (1 - 5), on their importance in a microwave oven. a. Company Name b. Functions c. Price d. Comfort e. Design The most important attribute is ranked 1 by the respondents and the least important is ranked 5. Instead of numbers, letters or symbols too can be used to rate in a ordinal scale. Such scale makes no attempt to measure the degree of favourability of different rankings. Example 2 - If there are 4 different types of fertilizers and if they are ordered on the basis of quality as Grade A, Grade B, Grade C, Grade D is again an Ordinal Scale. Example 3 - If there are 5 different brands of Talcom Powder and if a respondent ranks them based on say, Freshness into Rank 1 having maximum Freshness Rank 2 the second maximum Freshness, and so on, an Ordinal Scale results. Median and mode are meaningful for ordinal scale.

INTERVAL SCALE
Quantitative attributes are all measurable on interval scales, as any difference between the levels of an attribute can be multiplied by any real number to exceed or equal another difference. A highly familiar example of interval scale measurement is temperature with the Celsius scale. In this particular scale, the unit of measurement is 1/100 of the difference between the melting temperature and the boiling temperature of water at atmospheric pressure. The "zero point" on an interval scale is arbitrary; and negative values can be used.
7

The formal mathematical term is an affine space (in this case an affine line). The Likert scale, which is one of the most common scales used in survey research, would be a popular example and practical application of the 'interval scale'. Variables measured at the interval level are called "interval variables" or sometimes "scaled variables" as they have units of measurement. Ratios between numbers on the scale are not meaningful, so operations such as multiplication and division cannot be carried out directly. But ratios of differences can be expressed; for example, one difference can be twice another. The central tendency of a variable measured at the interval level can be represented by its mode, its median, or its arithmetic mean. Statistical dispersion can be measured in most of the usual ways, which just involved differences or averaging, such as range, interquartile range, and standard deviation. Since one cannot divide, one cannot define measures that require a ratio, such as studentized range or coefficient of variation. More subtly, while one can define moments about the origin, only central moments are useful, since the choice of origin is arbitrary and not meaningful. One can define standardized moments, since ratios of differences are meaningful, but one cannot define coefficient of variation, since the mean is a moment about the origin, unlike the standard deviation, which is (the square root of) a central moment. Illustration 1 - How do you rate your present refrigerator for the following qualities. Company Name Functions Price Design Overall Satisfaction Such a scale permits the Less Known Few Low Poor Very Dis-Satisfied researcher to say 1 2 3 4 5 Well Known 1 2 3 4 5 Many 1 2 3 4 5 High 1 2 3 4 5 Good 1 2 3 4 5 Very Satisfied that position 5 on the scale is above

position 4 and also the distance from 5 to 4 is same as distance from 4 to 3. Such a scale however does not permit conclusion that position 4 is twice as strong as position 2 because no zero position has been established. The data obtained from the Interval Scale can be used to calculate the Mean scores of each attributes over all respondents. The Standard Deviation (a measure of dispersion) can also be calculated.

RATIO MEASUREMENT
Most measurement in the physical sciences and engineering is done on ratio scales. Mass, length, time, plane angle, energy and electric charge are examples of physical measures that are ratio scales. The scale type takes its name from the fact that measurement is the estimation of the ratio between a magnitude of a continuous quantity and a unit magnitude of the same kind (Michell, 1997, 1999). Informally, the distinguishing feature of a ratio scale is the possession of a non-arbitrary zero value. For example, the Kelvin temperature scale has a non-arbitrary zero point of absolute zero, which is denoted 0K and is equal to -273.15 degrees Celsius. This zero point is non arbitrary as the particles that compose matter at this temperature have zero kinetic energy. Examples of ratio scale measurement in the behavioral sciences are all but non-existent. Luce (2000) argues that an example of ratio scale measurement in psychology can be found in rank and sign dependent expected utility theory. All statistical measures can be used for a variable measured at the ratio level, as all necessary mathematical operations are defined. The central tendency of a variable measured at the ratio level can be represented by, in addition to its mode, its median, or its arithmetic mean, also its geometric mean or harmonic mean. In addition to the measures of statistical dispersion defined for interval variables, such as range and standard deviation, for ratio variables one can also define measures that require a ratio, such as studentized range orcoefficient of variation. Consider the following questions : Q 1) What is your annual income before taxes? ______ $ Q 2) How far is the Theater from your home ? ______ miles Answers to these questions have a natural, unambiguous starting point, namely zero. Since starting point is not chosen arbitrarily, computing and interpreting ratio makes sense. For example we can say that a respondent with an annual income of $ 40,000 earns twice as much as one with an annual income of $ 20,000.

SCALING
9

Scaling is the branch of measurement that involves the construction of an instrument that associates qualitative constructs with quantitative metric units. Scaling evolved out of efforts in psychology and education to measure "unmeasurable" constructs like authoritarianism and self esteem. In many ways, scaling remains one of the most arcane and misunderstood aspects of social research measurement. And, it attempts to do one of the most difficult of research tasks -- measure abstract concepts. Most people don't even understand what scaling is. The basic idea of scaling is described in General Issues in Scaling, including the important distinction between a scale and a response format. Scales are generally divided into two broad categories: unidimensional and multidimensional. The unidimensional scaling methods were developed in the first half of the twentieth century and are generally named after their inventor.

Comparative Scales The comparative scales can further be divided into the following four types of scaling techniques: (a) Paired Comparison Scale, (b) Rank Order Scale, (c) Constant Sum Scale, and (d) Q-sort Scale. Paired Comparison Scale:
10

This is a comparative scaling technique in which a respondent is presented with two objects at a time and asked to select one object (rate between two objects at a time) according to some criterion. The data obtained are ordinal in nature. For example, there are four types of cold drinks - Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, and Limca. The respondents can prefer Pepsi to Coke or Coke to Sprite, etc. In all we can have the following six comparisons. CokePepsi CokeSprite CokeLimca PepsiSprite PepsiLimca SpriteLimca In general, with n brands we have paired comparisons. The following

is the data recording format using the paired comparisons.

A in a particular box means that the brand in that column was preferred over the brand in the corresponding row. In the above recording, Coke was preferred over Sprite, Coke over Limca, in this case the number of times coke preferred was 2 times. Similarly, Pepsi over Coke, Pepsi over Sprite, Pepsi over Limca, in this case Pepsi was 3 time preferred. Thus, the number of times a brand was preferred is obtained by summing the s in each column. The following table gives paired comparison of data (assumed) for four brands of cold drinks.

11

The entries in the boxes represent the proportion of respondents preferring column brand and to row brand. For example, 90% prefer Pepsi to Coke and only 10% prefer Coke to Pepsi, etc. Paired comparison is useful when the number of brands are limited, since it requires direct comparison and overt choice. One of the disadvantages of paired comparison scale is violation of the assumption of transitivity may occur. For example, in our example the respondent preferred Coke 2 times, Pepsi 3 times, Sprite 1 time, and Limca 0 times. That means, preference-wise, Pepsi >Coke, Coke >Sprite, and Sprite >Limca. However, the number of times Sprite was preferred should not be that of Coke. In other words, if A>B and B >C then C >A should not be possible. Also, the order in which the objects are presented may bias the results. The number of items/brands for comparison should not be too many. As the number of items increases, the number of comparisons increases geometrically. If the number of comparisons is too large, the respondents may become fatigued and no longer be able to carefully discriminate among them. The other limitation of paired comparison is that this scale has little resemblance to the market situation, which involves selection from multiple alternatives. Also, respondents may prefer one item over certain others, but they may not like it in an absolute sense.

Rank Order Scale: This is another type of comparative scaling technique in which
respondents are presented with several items simultaneously and asked to rank them in the order of priority. This is an ordinal scale that describes the favoured and unfavoured objects, but does not reveal the distance between the objects. For example, if you are interested in ranking the preference of some selected brands of cold drinks, you may use the following format for recording the responses. Preference of cold drink brands using rank order scaling
12

Like paired comparison, the rank order scale, is also comparative in nature. The resultant data in rank order is ordinal data. This method is more realistic in obtaining the responses and it yields better results when direct comparison are required between the given objects. The major disadvantage of this technique is that only ordinal data can be generated.

Itemized Rating Scales

These scales are different from continuous rating scales. They have a number of brief descriptions associated with each category. They are widely used in Marketing Research. They essentially take the form of the multiple category questions. The most common are Likert, Sementic, Staple and Multiple Dimension. Others are - Thurston and Guttman. Likert Scale It was developed Rensis Likert. Here the respondents are asked to indicate a degree of agreement and disagreement with each of a series of statement. Each scale item has 5 response categories ranging from strongly agree and strongly disagree. 5 Strongly agree 4 3 2 1

Agree Indifferent

Disagree Strongly disagree

Each statement is assigned a numerical score ranging from 1 to 5. It can also be scaled as -2 to +2. -2 -1 0 1 2
13

For example quality of Mother Diary ice-cream is poor then Not Good is a negative statement and Strongly Agree with this means the quality is not good. Each degree of agreement is given a numerical score and the respondents total score is computed by summing these scores. This total score of respondent reveals the particular opinion of a person. Likert Scale are of ordinal type, they enable one to rank attitudes, but not to measure the difference between attitudes. They take about the same amount of efforts to create as Thurston scale and are considered more discriminating and reliable because of the larger range of responses typically given in Likert scale. A typical Likert scale has 20 - 30 statements. While designing a good Likert Scale, first a large pool of statements relevant to the measurement of attitude has to be generated and then from the pool statements, the statements which are vague and non-discriminating have to be eliminated. Thus, likert scale is a five point scale ranging from strongly agreementto strongly disagreement. No judging gap is involved in this method. Semantic Differential Scale This is a seven point scale and the end points of the scale are associated with bipolar labels. 1 Unpleasant 2 Submissive 3 4 5 6 7 Pleasant Dominant

Suppose we want to know personality of a particular person. We have optionsa. Unpleasant/Submissive b. Pleasant/Dominant Bi-polar means two opposite streams. Individual can score between 1 to 7 or -3 to 3. On the basis of these responses profiles are made. We can analyse for two or three products and by joining these profiles we get profile analysis. It could take any shape depending on the number of variables. Profile Analysis
14

---------------/------------------------/---------------------------/---------------------Mean and median are used for comparison. This scale helps to determine overall similarities and differences among objects. When Semantic Differential Scale is used to develop an image profile, it provides a good basis for comparing images of two or more items. The big advantage of this scale is its simplicity, while producing results compared with those of the more complex scaling methods. The method is easy and fast to administer, but it is also sensitive to small differences in attitude, highly versatile, reliable and generally valid. Stapels Scale It was developed by Jan Stapel. This scale has some distinctive features: Each item has only one word/phrase indicating the dimension it represents. Each item has ten response categories. Each item has an even number of categories. The response categories have numerical labels but no verbal labels.

For example, in the following items, suppose for quality of ice cream, we ask respondents to rank from +5 to -5. Select a plus number for words which best describe the ice cream accurately. Select a minus number for words you think do not describe the ice cream quality accurately. Thus, we can select any number from +5,for words we think are very accurate, to -5,for words we think are very inaccurate. This scale is usually presented vertically. +5 +4 +3 +2 +1 High Quality
15

-1 -2 -3 -4 -5 This is a unipolar rating scale.

Multi Dimensional Scaling It consists of a group of analytical techniques which are used to study consumer attitudes related to perceptions and preferences. It is used to study The major attributes of a given class of products perceivedby the consumers in considering the product and by which they compare the different ranks. To study which brand competes most directly with each other. To find out whether the consumers would like a new brand with a combination of characteristics not found in the market. What would be the consumers ideal combination of product attributes. What sales and advertising messages are compatible with consumers brand perceptions. It is a computer based technique. The respondents are asked to place the various brands into different groups like similar, very similar, not similar, and so on. A goodness of fit is traded off on a large number of attributes. Then a lack of fit index is calculated by computer program. The purpose is to find a reasonably small number of dimensions which will eliminate most of the stress. After the configuration for the consumers preference has been developed, the next step is to determine the preference with regards to the product under study. These techniques attempt to identify the product attributes that are important to consumers and to measure their relative importance.
16

This scaling involves a unrealistic assumption that a consumer who compares different brands would perceive the differences on the basis of only one attribute.For example, what are the attributes for joining M.Com course. The responses may be -to do PG, to go into teaching line,to get knowledge, appearing in the NET. There are a number of attributes, you can not base decision on one attribute only. Therefore, when the consumers are choosing between brands, they base their decision on various attributes. In practice, the perceptions of the consumers involve different attributes and any one consumer perceives each brand as a composite of a number of different attributes. This is a shortcoming of this scale.

CASE STUDY

17

THE COMPANY
AcmeTel was formed keeping in mind the dire need of the industry for reliable and most suitable voice service provider that serves their purpose. This point encapsulates two major deviations that exist in the present day market i.e. over selling to the requirements to reap undue margins and under selling by lack of requirement understanding. AcmeTel wish to extend our top notch consulting services to our perspective clients to help them reap the benefits of their respective industries. We are focused on telecom sector and the target clients will be telecom operators, wholesalers, voice terminators. Our solutions will greatly help these companies in their hunt for professional and high quality services. The focus is to offer them global termination and to trade voice traffic with them. Every telecom operator is continuously in search of competitive and efficient routes. With our contacts and relevant experience, we believe that this business has a lot of potential and growth opportunities. Telecom is observing its biggest booms these days especially Middleeast & Asia. Our target the right audience and deliver solutions according to their needs, we have the confidence to make it a very successful company, both in terms of volumes and profitability. We have chosen UAE to carry out any business due to ideal location for our region (bridge between East and West), open trade policies offered by your government, these help in building confidence of the businessmen in the region. UAE is one of the most stable countries in terms of political stability. This ensures the continuation of policies, excellent banking system to support our operations. Ease of funds transfer, presence of large number of multinational companies in the country. This helps in marketing and attracting a large pool of clients present in a close proximity.
18

VISION
Our vision at AcmeTel is to help our customer. By help, we mean to offer them exactly what they need and to further optimize the solution, if possible. This leads us to model our practices in such a way that we form a team with our customers and both of us strive together to reach a winwin situation.

GOALS
Customer Satisfaction is a buzz word amongst corporate entities and is more emphasized in the service industry. Customer satisfaction in essence, captures everything from effective sales to retention and repeat orders. This also fuels referrals and recommendations. We, at AcmeTel, do realize the importance of this fact. Employee Satisfaction is of utmost importance for any successful company. It is the employees that actually make the difference and we are well aware of it. Shareholder Satisfaction cannot be ignored as they are the ones responsible for the consequences of commercial / technical activities and AcmeTel knows it very well. . Our objectives are simple: We aim to satisfy our customers, employees and shareholders through our business conduct. Our activities will be transparent, ethical and we will achieve to grow our company by achieving satisfaction of all of our stakeholders. We will strictly abide by the laws of territory where we operate and places where we go.

PRODUCTS
VoIP (Wholesale) Scratch Card Printing Acmetel Consultancy Service

VoIP (Wholesale)
19

Wholesale Telecom Division is a leading provider of telecommunications wholesale voice connectivity. AcmeTel wholesale division is interconnected with all major Tier-1 international Carriers, PTT's through switching presences in Europe & USA over TDM & VoIP, gives us an opportunity to extend our global connectivity and reach.

AcmeTel uses state-of-the-art telephony equipments with VoIP platforms for origination and termination. AcmeTel superb automated routing system enables high quality routes with high redundancy and security. Additionally, performance monitoring, tracking and problem solving is executed on a 24x7 basis. AcmeTel has technically expert engineers and management professionals, who have vivid experience in Telecommunication Services. AcmeTels wholesale product provides voice termination worldwide A-Z. The top telecommunications companies in the world head up AcmeTel's extensive client list. AcmeTel has the right people, the right know-how and the right reputation.

AcmeTel is focusing to deploy new direct routes and to increase existing capacity. We are constantly searching for new opportunities to increase our reach throughout the world.

Scratch Card Printing

We design and produce scratch cards (forGSM, Calling Cards, Internet, etc.) to the very highest quality and security standards, which are in accordance with procedures indicated in the certification ISO 9001:2000. Offset printing and UV drying techniques are applied on printing, paper, carton, PVC, PP materials. Packaging is done in automatic machines with special cutting. Shipment and delivery are arranged on time, size and quantity. AcmeTel's scratch card printing service will produce high quality scratch cards at a very competitive price. Combine this with AcmeTels proven experience in scratch card printing, and you can rest assured that AcmeTel is the perfect partner for your scratch card marketing campaign.

Acmetel Consultancy Services

20

In today's fast-paced and rapidly changing Information Technology environment, the appropriate use of technology and strategic business planning solutions tailored to your business needs and objectives is the key to your success. With an in-depth understanding of business process and technology along with hands-on experience gained through working on critical issues in key industries of the IT marketplace, AcmeTel is committed to providing you with top-end consulting services and solutions to meet your unique business challenges. Our professional team of business and technology consultants brings a wide variety of knowledge and skills combined with functional and industry experience to serve the highdemanding consulting and strategy planning needs of our clients for Data Centre designing, Network designing, Information Security, and Network Audit etc. We are ITIL certified and hold industry recognized pre-qualification, giving you the flexibility to meet the diversity of your special requirements. If you have some idea in mind or you are thinking of applying IT technology in a unique and interesting way and you are not sure whether the concept is feasible, our consultants can hold a feasibility study and assist you with technical advice, investigation and assessment resulting in a feasibility report to provide you with a clear vision of how this solution can be used to meet your business objectives or gain a distinct advantage over competitors. Together we can build strategic partnership and either work with your business units and IT department to implement this solution or provide you with a turnkey project from strategy and management to complete development process.

INTRODUCTION OF NEW PRODUCT IN BUSINESS

Call Shop (Retailer)
New entrepreneurs who would like to get into the highly promising industry of Voice over IP without hefty investment costs and complicated set-up and maintenance processes. Existing Internet Cafe owners looking to expand their customer base by using their current infrastructure to offer additional services. Traditional PSTN CallShop owners wanting to reduce costs and boost profits by simply 'switching' or upgrading to VoIP-based systems. Carriers who would like to increase their wholesale traffic and enlist more customers by offering hosted CallShop services.

Typical CallShop Scenarios

21

Prepaid
Customer visits the CallShop.

Customer pre-pays the operator for the call. The operator will then activate a phone booth for the customer using the CallShop VoIP Software. The customer will go to the phone booth and dial the destination number. CallShop VoIP will record the call details and the corresponding call charges for future reporting needs.

Postpaid
Customer visits the CallShop.

Customer chooses a vacant phone booth and dials the destination number. CallShop VoIP keeps track of each phone booth's call details and the corresponding call charges for invoicing and future reporting needs. When the customer has completed his/her calls, the operator generates an invoice for the customer's calls.

WHICH MEASUREMENT AND SCALING TECHNIQUES USED IN RESEARCH OF NEW PRODUCT

Almost all the measurement and scaling techniques were used in the research of a new product because the success and failure of the product will be depend on the research which we had done before the product launch. So the researcher should be very careful about all the aspect of the product , market , competitor as well as the customers demand and satisfaction. The product which the company is going to launch is the calling card which design for the international calls. Its mean the company should research on those customer who are dealing in foreign or those individual whose relatives are lived in foreign.

22

Some important measurement and scaling techniques which the researchers used were as follows. Nominal scale At the nominal scale, i.e., for a nominal category, one uses labels; for example, rocks can be generally categorized as igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. For this scale, some valid operations are equivalence and set membership. Nominal measures offer names or labels for certain characteristics.

Ordinal scale Rank-ordering data simply puts the data on an ordinal scale. Ordinal measurements describe order, but not relative size or degree of difference between the items measured. In this scale type, the numbers assigned to objects or events represent the rank order (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) of the entities assessed. A scale may also use names with an order such as: "bad", "medium", and "good"; or "very satisfied", "satisfied", "neutral", "unsatisfied", "very unsatisfied." Example 1: Rank the following attributes (1 - 5), on their importance in a calling card were. a. Company Name b. Functions c. Price d. Comfort e. Design The most important attribute is ranked 1 by the respondents and the least important is ranked 5. Instead of numbers, letters or symbols too can be used to rate in a ordinal scale. Such scale makes no attempt to measure the degree of favourability of different rankings Interval scale Quantitative attributes are all measurable on interval scales, as any difference between the levels of an attribute can be multiplied by any real number to exceed or equal another
23

difference. A highly familiar example of interval scale measurement is temperature with the Celsius scale. In this particular scale, the unit of measurement is 1/100 of the difference between the melting temperature and the boiling temperature of water at atmospheric pressure. Ratio measurement Most measurement in the physical sciences and engineering is done on ratio scales. Mass, length, time, plane angle, energy and electric charge are examples of physical measures that are ratio scales. The scale type takes its name from the fact that measurement is the estimation of the ratio between a magnitude of a continuous quantity and a unit magnitude of the same kind.

SWOT ANALYSIS
STRENGTHS
Better Prices Efficient NOC Special Arrangements with Carriers Low Cost Operations Direct Routes for Pakistan, Oman, Lebanon, Bangladesh Efficient cash Flow management

WEAKNESSES
No Information System No Switch (hosted solution) No clear definition of Job Descriptions

OPPORTUNATIES
Need to expand business in Retail Sector
24

Have to own new switch VOIP Expanding No boundaries Most of the country have liberal Policies in Telecom

THREATS
Threats from Competitors (SIDO TEL, TATA, BHAOO ) Change in technology Business Risk is high New in entrants

RECOMMENDATION
Company should adopt the complete information system
Company should diversify the risk e.g Retail operation

Company should invest in Human Resource Company should hedge risks

25

References

Web http://www.cbizlinks.com http://www.blurtit.com/q2899395.html www.scribd.com www.mba.com

Books Uma Sekaran Donald R.Cooper Pamela S.Schindler

And

26

Class lectures

27