You work for a soft drink manufacturer that produces a popular soft drink called chocolate cola (affectionately known as `choc-cola'). You are responsible for working out how much choc-cola to produce to satisfy demand and make the largest profit.

a) Your manager tells you to use the past sales figures to determine how much choc-cola to produce and stock. Why might past sales figures provide a biased picture of the potential demand for choc-cola?

b) You decide to run an online survey to work out how much demand there is for choc-cola, and what customers would be willing to pay. Briefly describe what information you would want to collect in the survey, and any factors you think are important in designing the survey. In your answer, also briefly discuss how you would deal with privacy concerns.

c) Your boss tells you to instead run the survey as a face-to-face survey in front of the local supermarket. You are told to run a small marketing campaign outside the supermarket and tell everyone how great choc-cola is, and then ask how much they would be willing to pay for choc-cola. What are the problems with this approach to estimating demand for choc-cola?

d) After running the survey your boss decides she wants to email the survey respondents to tell them about the "great deals" coming on the company's other soft drinks. Do you give her the respondents' personal information? Why or why not?