Does presentation format matter? The impact of data presentation on decision making

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics - Controlling, grade: 2,0, , language: English, abstract: Decisions are made based on the information available to the decision maker. For companies the decisions of potential and existing investors matter most. Hence, businesses aim at presenting themselves to their stakeholders in the best way possible. This can be done through all channels of communication that are controlled by the company. Big entities hire specialised employees for departments such as communication or investor relations. Therefore, this paper aims at answering the question ‘which form of data presentation is most effective for communicating information to investors?’ and ‘which aspects have to be kept in mind when visualising data?’. Hereby, different presentation formats will be compared in terms of their usefulness for decision making. Furthermore, it will be discussed how different types of data have to be visualised. In order to understand why and how data can be manipulated, principles of correct visualisation will be analysed. The research is done by reviewing topic-related literature.