Beyond the Raw Slope: Cost, Context, and Decision-Making at a Penang SME
Facing pricing, supplier contract, and staffing decisions, a Penang-based artisanal bakery turns to regression analysis to understand its cost structure.
At a glance
Location
Penang, Malaysia
Industry
Food & Beverage (Artisan Bakery)
Case Focus
Regression Interpretation
Abstract
This case study follows Aisha Rahman, owner of a growing artisan bakery in Penang, Malaysia, as she tries to convert two years of operating data into defensible answers for three cost-sensitive decisions: a quarterly wholesale pricing signal to her hotel client, a twelve-month exclusive supply contract with her flour distributor, and a staff-hours reorganization triggered by the departure of two bakers. Her final-year business analytics intern, Haziq, has run a multiple regression on her monthly cost data, and the coefficients on his printout look alternately too big, too small, and wrongly interpreted. The case study uses the Stata package ‘coefconv’ to convert each raw slope into the 26 practically useful re-expressions that contextualize the estimate, and walks students through three specific misreads — a coefficient that looks implausibly large, a coefficient that looks trivially small, and an intercept misread as fixed cost — each with a ringgit cost attached. The pedagogical target is a student capable of translating regression output into business decisions in units that match the requirements.
Note: This case study was developed as a pedagogical application of the coefconv Stata package (Arshed, 2026, SSC). The dataset is synthetic but calibrated so that all 26 coefconv effect types produce teachable results aligned with the narrative of the case. The case study is based on a fictional company; all names and entities are fictitious, and any images are used solely for illustrative purposes.
Instructors are encouraged to share any adaptations or extensions of this case with the author. Feedback from classroom use, alternative scenarios, or links to related courses will help inform future revisions.
Contact: Dr Noman Arshed, nomana@sunway.edu.my, Sunway Business School, Sunway University.
Cover Photo: QingYu on Unsplash
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(1) Regarding Case Study Content: This case study is based mainly on secondary data and analysis of publicly available information unless otherwise stated, and is intended solely for educational purposes. Any opinions expressed by the author(s) are designed to facilitate learning discussion and do not serve to illustrate the effectiveness of the company. Additionally, banner images and logos used in the case study are intended for visualization in an educational setting and it is not used to represent or brand the company. For any dispute regarding the content and usage of images and logos, please contact the team.
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