An appropriate management use of statistics is **understanding the demographics of customers**, which supports informed, proactive decision-making. Data-driven decision making emphasizes using statistical analysis to explore patterns, characteristics, and trends that help organizations better understand their customers and markets.
Analyzing customer demographics such as age, income, location, and preferences allows managers to segment markets, tailor products, improve services, and allocate resources effectively. This use of statistics is descriptive and diagnostic in nature and directly supports strategic planning.
Ordering products for an entire region based on data from a single store is inappropriate due to lack of representativeness. Justifying decisions after implementation reflects misuse of statistics, as analytics should inform decisions beforehand, not rationalize them after the fact. Implementing changes solely based on survey response rate ignores the content and validity of responses.
Ethical data-driven decision making requires that statistics be used responsibly, transparently, and with appropriate context. Therefore, the correct answer is **A**, as understanding customer demographics represents a proper and effective use of statistics by management.
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