Statement of Problem

 

Our problem will identify if more females than males go through the self-checkout line in Giant Eagle at 10 minute intervals through the time of 4:30 p.m. and 6:10 p.m.  We will test the true proportion of both genders and determine if more females do actually use the self-checkout line at our local North Olmsted Giant Eagle (sample).  What made us think of this study is the frequent amount of trips made to Giant Eagle by Mrs. Calanni.  Also, we thought of it because we have each used the self-checkout line at various stores.  We are doing this study because it seems like a very unique study and one that many people would be curious about.  Everyone who pays at a grocery store or retail store like Giant Eagle has the choice of going through a cashier line or a self-checkout line. We decided that we wanted to find out which gender makes the choice of using the self-checkout line more frequently.

 

Abstract

 

We began our study by doing background research, in order to see if any studies similar to ours have been previously conducted. We contacted the North Olmsted Giant Eagle by telephone and inquired about the true question of our study.  A supervisor told us that Giant Eagle has not collected data based on gender at the self-checkout line and if they had, the information would not be released. We began to use the search engines of Google and Bing in hopes of finding relevant information to our study.  We came across a large amount of unsuccessful searches as we entered variations of the phrase, “gender self-checkout line” into the search bars.  However, we did stumble upon two useful links that provided previous study results, such as, how many transactions are done at the self-checkout line and various trends by gender at the self-checkout line.  We then collected our data on four different occasions and on two different days of the week.  On two different Mondays and two different Sundays, we were granted permission to sit behind the six self-checkout lanes from 4:30 p.m. to 6:10 p.m.  We manually counted each person who went through the each self-checkout line, timing each 10 minute interval with a stopwatch.  We separated our counts by gender and only those taking part in a transaction were counted towards our data (excluding children).  Each person could only be counted towards one time interval, even if they remained in line at the start of the next.  Our population of interest was all shoppers who went through the self-checkout lines at the North Olmsted Giant Eagle.  Our sample size consisted of every shopper that went through the self checkout lines per ten minute interval at the North Olmsted Giant Eagle.  After we collected all of our data, we began to compare the true proportion of females and males who went through the self-checkout line per ten minute interval. Our graphs (a pie chart and a time series plot) clearly showed that a greater proportion of females went through the self-checkout line over each individual time interval and over total counts in our collected data.  Our descriptive statistics also vividly favored a greater proportion of females who went through the self-checkout line.  Our study, like every study, had some weaknesses to it. One of the study weaknesses was that we collected our data at Giant Eagle during a holiday weekend (Easter) which could have affected the amount of people that went into Giant Eagle.  The fact that we collected our data on two different days of the week also acted as a weakness.  A confounding variable was the actual population of all Giant Eagle shoppers.  We could have counted each person who entered the store and compared the proportion of females who entered to males who entered.  We do believe that our research could be used in other Giant Eagles across Northeast Ohio, but we are not comfortable with a wide extrapolation. We believe our study could be further preformed by stores themselves, offering a gender option on the self-checkout computer systems.  Lastly, we ran a two proportions significance test at a significance level of 0.05.  The z value equalled 14.03 and the p value equalled zero.  Since the p value of zero is less than any level of significance, we were able to reject the null hypothesis.  Our original expectations were supported by this significance test.  We were able to state that we had sufficient evidence to say that the true proportion of females who go through the self-checkout line at ten minute intervals is greater than the true proportion of males who go through the self-checkout line at ten minute intervals.