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6.2.11

"Discriminant Analysis in application" - Rohit Kumar, 12041, Group 9.


(This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance is merely coincidental.)

There I am, sitting in plush office of the company called "Banana"; the only true rival of ‘The Apple’. By now you would have rightly imagined that it must be an innovative value-defining-product company.

I have got the responsibility of sanctioning funds to projects for new products. The latest in line is - “The Green Banana”. It’s a product that is expected to create a blue ocean, an uncontested market space, a market segment that did not exist before.

I jotted down the drivers that could potentially affect the market success or failure of such products; the drivers that could be observed even before launching of the product. Then, I collected data for previously introduced products and their business outcome - success or failure.

I performed discriminant analysis over that data in order to get a function based on those factors that could tell me likely business outcome of “The Green Banana” launch.

Even though, the analysis showed a favorable outcome, the probabilities were not very heartening. I made some suggestions to the project team, based on the discriminant function, which could help increase the probability of success. After some discussions, the team agreed to implement a few of those suggestions, and come up with revised proposal.

New specifications showed a much better probability of success, and now I was more confident about sanctioning funds to the project.

Fifteen months down the line “The Green Banana” has achieved a stupendous success. Everyone seems happy; and I am thinking, this success owes a little bit, or may be more, to the discriminant analysis that I learnt in my business intelligence lectures.

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