Oh, hey! This is my first blog post, woooo! I thought that it'd be simple to start off with a project that I could personally benefit from. Backstory: I'm currently a manager at a New Balance Factory Store, and as a store, we weren't hitting many of our daily goals. My goal was to figure out how we could maximize the amount of money we make on a daily basis. One opportunity that I saw was in training. While we focus on training associates on tasks that affect the daily flow of the store, sometimes we miss opportunities to train them on specific things that they are bound to encounter. One of those big things is helping people with specific foot issues... Okay, enough from me. Let's let the research do the talking.
For those that are not familiar with the New Balance brand, the company was founded in 1906. It began as an arch support company that took inspiration from the impeccable balance of a chicken (Yes...a chicken. When was the last time you saw a chicken stumble? I'll wait...). Nowadays, New Balance is best known as an athletic footwear and apparel company. New Balance shoes are commonly recommended by podiatrists and orthopedic specialists. Therefore, it is important to have some knowledge of common foot issues to help customers who are following doctors’ recommendations. Actually, sorry...speaking of chickens: Where did the chicken go after it crossed the street? The answer is at the end of this post.
Problem
Employees should be able to properly do their job to the fullest extent. Training is an essential part of new-hire onboarding and the continued success of each associate throughout their time at New Balance. Learning as much as possible regarding foot ailments, foot types, and such can help with getting customers to purchase products. Product knowledge is key in the retail industry and associates should be able and willing to flex that knowledge to make sales. It seems that the huge dip in sales at the New Balance Factory Store Oxon can be attributed to a lack of knowledge. With this project, I wanted to see if there is a correlation between the amount of podiatric knowledge an associate has and the amount of money they bring in individually. My hypothesis was that if an employee has more podiatry knowledge, then their individual sales will be higher. The goal is to be able to maximize store revenue through increased product and foot knowledge.
Data Collection
For this research project, I surveyed the 11 other employees at the New Balance Factory Store in Oxon Hill, MD. The sample size for this research is so small because I wasn't able to guarantee that any of the other stores would participate correctly. Also, I was mostly interested in how training could impact my store and not really New Balance as a whole.
The questions that were chosen for the survey questionnaire were tailored specifically to attempt to understand the correlation between knowledge of podiatric issues and individual sales. The questions were broken down into three main sections. The first three are preliminary questions to learn more about the respondent and put them into categories. The following seven questions asked the associates to rate their current level of knowledge of common foot issues (plantar fasciitis, neuropathy, overpronation, and supination) and New Balance products (neutral, stability, and motion control shoes) from 1 to 5. A score of 1 meant that they'd never really heard of the concept and 5 meant they were an expert. In an attempt to quantify the amount of training each person has, I added their ratings for each question together and created a Cumulative Training Score (CTS). Since there are 7 questions, the lowest score an associate could have is a 7 and the highest score they could have is a 35. The last three questions were used to gauge the employee’s ability to apply the knowledge gained from training to in-store situations. I would have preferred to conduct the surveys in-person to eliminate the seemingly inherent trait of respondents lying on surveys. I wish that I was able to personally let everyone know how important it is to answer the questions truthfully to the best of their ability because this has the potential to skew the results of the survey.
If you would like to see the official survey form, click here.
Outside of collecting the associates' responses to these questions, I also collected everyone's individual sales data for the two-week period. I also collected the number of hours each associate worked through this period. If you divide the total individual sales by the number of hours worked, you get each associate's sales per hour. This is the variable that will be compared to the Cumulative Training Score. Using total individual sales alone could skew the results because those that work more hours will usually have more sales.
Results
This chart above depicts the makeup of each associates Cumulative Training Score.
This scatterplot shows each employee’s Cumulative Training Score and their average sales per hour for the two-week period of data collection. The graph shows that there is a positive/direct relationship between the amount of training each employee has and the amount they sell per hour.
The variables Cumulative Training Score and Sales per Hour have a Pearson correlation (R) of 0.671. This value means that there is a strong direct relationship between the two variables. When examining the relationship between the variables, a confidence level of 95% was used. The correlation significance (p) value is 0.018. Since this value is less than 0.05, the correlation between variables is statistically significant. The correlation between the level of podiatric knowledge and average sales per hour is unlikely due to chance.
The regression coefficients are the constant coefficient of -44.75 and the Cumulative Training Score coefficient of 7.36. The p-values for the regression and the Cumulative Training Score coefficient are 0.024, and since this value is less than 0.05, the coefficient is said to be statistically significant. The Cumulative Training Score coefficient shows that for each 1-point increase in CTS, there is an expected $7.36 increase in average sales per hour. For example, the lowest possible score is 7. Thus, an employee with no knowledge of foot ailments is expected to contribute $6.77 per hour. This makes sense because due to the employee’s lack of knowledge, they will more than likely recommend the wrong shoe and cause customers to either leave without an item or return the item later (which, if I can speak candidly, is the worsttttt. As a manager, you never want hear "someone told me that this would be a good shoe for me but it made the issue worse"). The average CTS was 24.18, which results in an expected value of $133.21 per hour. An employee with a perfect score of 35 has an expected value of $212.85. This figure is close to the cost of one pair of 993s, the New Balance shoe most highly recommended by podiatrists.
Conclusion
Based on the data collected and analyzed, there is a clear positive relationship between the amount of knowledge an associate has on foot problems and the amount of revenue that they individually generate. The store would benefit from putting more focus on educating the associates on foot problems. They would be more equipped to handle any customers that come in the store trying to find shoes that will help correct or alleviate pain from any issues they are having. Having more knowledge helps everybody involved: from the customer, to the associate, to the store itself.
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