“Most of the respondents gave a good rating for both brands…”

Within an hour after making my prior post, another student cited an article from the Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research. I suspect US-based students are citing this journal because of it’s reported Impact Factor of 7.95, which is showing up in their searches.

The article cited was from Agrawal and Kumar (2023). In this article, the authors explored what they describe as Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), such as food and beverage, personal care, and healthcare goods. They focused on products sold by two companies: Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) and ITC. The authors compared five brands in the soap, cream, coffee, deodorant, and dishwashing soap categories.

There is quite a bit of descriptive statistics reported about their sample (N = 100); however, critical data can be found in Tables 11 and 13. In Table 11, the authors report the respondents views towards the products based on their quality as measured on a 5-point Likert scale. Similarly, in Table 13, they measure respondents brand ratings based on cost (also measured on a 5-point Likert scale).

What’s interesting about this research is that there is simply no data analysis other than descriptive. However, there are two pages of results and findings. Nearly all of the “findings” are simply restated descriptive statistics. Why not numericize the 5-point Likert scales, show the M/SD, and compare groups? Or, perform a Chi-square test of differences in responses?

I did the latter for brand rating based on quality. Only one group difference was found: VIM and Neameasy Gel in the dishwashing soap category. X²(4)=16.481, p =.002, w = 2.03, 95% CI (0.75, 2.85). The size of the effect is large, which means there is a large difference in the view of quality, with VIM being viewed as higher. Now, there is something to write about. I don’t know this product, but perhaps that could be the focus of a “finding.” I did the same type of test for the brand rating based on cost. There were no differences.

My question is: Why drone on about two company’s products when they are viewed as the same in both brand quality and cost (or value); with the lone exception being the dishwashing soap?