You are a marketing analyst in a large grocery store chain. Your job entails developing a robust customer knowledge base utilizing the company’s vast database of in-store purchases. To date, you have been able to build a profile of your customer base, draw inferences about different customer groupings, and compare customer behaviors across the different sales regions. Your task is to:

Describe the business benefits of parameter estimation. Provide examples of the type of parameters that might be of interest to decision makers in areas such as marketing.

Elaborate on how being able to estimate those parameters would benefit the quality of the resultant decisions.

Describe the business benefits of drawing inferences—specifically, when it is advantageous to rely on inferences and what is required to ascertain the correctness of inferences.

Discuss the relationship between tests of difference and hypothesis testing in the context of designing marketing promotions.