Analyzing Sales Data For An E-commerce Company Essay.

You are working as a Data Scientist in an ecommerce company.  The company is a market leader with range of product segments.  The main product segments are latest gadgets, books, toys, household items and clothes. 

However, the company’s performance especially its profitability is decreasing due to increased competition and changing customer expectations. The company has well qualified board of directors who believe in the power of data analytics in solving business problems and thus make important business decisions.  Due to your data analytics skills and data science capability, the company executives have given you a special task in analysing the company’s sales data for each product segment and each geographic region.  The executives have requested you the following:

1. Develop the dataset for at least one product segment with at least 1000 records and with attributes such as

• product name,
• product price,
• shipping type (free or customer paid)
• monthly sales ($)
• geographic region
• Of customers who bought the product,
• Customer type (New or existing)

You are also allowed to add any more attributes to describe product segment

You must develop your own unique and original dataset - copying a dataset from another student or from the internet will result in reduced.

2. Research any specific data mining or classification technique and propose a suitable technique or model to determine any association or relationships among the attributes.
   
   
3. Develop a predictive model to predict monthly sales for a given geographic region. You can use any of the methods such as Naive Bayes, decision trees or linear regression. You are also welcome to do a comparative analysis of all the methods you come across in your research and use the comparative analysis to justify your approach and research findings.
   
   
4. Based on your analysis, present recommendations to the board for the following business problems:

• What is the most likely geographic region to target new customers to increase sales and profit?
• Which products should be prioritised for increase in sales?
• What will be impact on product sales if free shipping is provided to all products?

Challenges Faced by the E-commerce Company

In several competitive services companies, service businesses attempts to remain forward in drawing customers through raising the quality of services over the one offered by competing businesses. Nevertheless, because of an extremely aggressive as well as quickly fluctuating business, client services necessity can rise quickly, organizations must screen consumers' service needs remembering the end objective of keeping up clients' suitable service anticipations (Zikopoulos, et al 2013). The paper scrutinizes a situation of a business market administrator with a number of merchandises segment, which has been antagonized by a decline in profits amongst stiff competition as well as transforming customer prospects.

Conditional factors taken as administration execution settings that customer’s survey as external the capacity to regulate business services (Li, et al 2015). Clients see the situational factors as not the blame of the service business and may acknowledge low levels of service since they comprehended the emanation of the issue. Client self-perceived service part is seen as how clients expect the service. Clients who needs their steak to be no overcooked they will likely be disappointed if the steak is together overcooked. Impermanent services includes individual in short-term services that make clients a more of the need for services in time of crisis. Viewed services options are other administration organizations that give the administrations clients need. Their level of services are palatable than those of clients trust that are not fulfilling.

During a recession, the expectations of the more fulfilling service are required with a specific end goal to keep up desire for clients. In this unique circumstance, a business objective is to meet clients' desire superior to its rivals. Notwithstanding accessibility of administration choices from different organizations, the fulfilling service level mirrors the base execution level expected by clients after they consider an assortment of both individual and external variables. The five factors that impact attractive business incorporate anticipated services, customer self-service role, situational factors, perceived services alternatives and transitory service (Boker, and Wenger, 2012). Anticipated service, this is the level of service clients have confidence in their needs and can be seen as expectations made by clients about what they expect in service. For instance, full-time occupants in a college town every now and again foresee quicker eatery benefit when understudies are in occasions in this manner when they are not on grounds.

Organizations whose service performance misses the mark regarding the satisfactory level are unquestionably at an aggressive detriment. In such manner, clients are prepared to take their business somewhere else or their buying power when they distinguish an option. Organizations performing in the regions of upper hand must remain alert to the requirement for service increments to meet competition (Li, et al 2015). Business require perform over the attractive service level keeping in mind the end goal to remain in service business aggressive regions.

Recommendations to Overcome the Challenges

The subjective examination procedure for this paper is concludes by the depiction of topical connections and trends of significance to the research. Thus, the topical connections and trends recognized amid the understanding procedure contributed towards the improvement of an suitable tool for the quantitative period of this exploration. The procedure of subjective examination delineated above filled in as a structure to guarantee that the underlying information (semi-structured meetings) were systematized by topical relationship to frame some portion of the information that was associated with and joined with the quantitative information. For lucidity purposes and a good comprehension of the subjective examination procedure for the present investigation, the subjective content examination procedure for the semi-structured data is outlined in figure 1 below.

The laid out process empowered an orderly and rationale well-ordered approach for the examination of the subjective information and enabled the analyst to go past insignificant explanatory, comparative and descriptive ends to find the justification of the findings. It is critical to keep in mind at that the subjective procedure is moved toward like a winding procedure and not as a settled direct activity (Nabi, 2012). The investigation content is laid out in the in Fig. 1, frequently covers and infers that the different strides of analysis are viewed as unimportant procedural rules and not as inflexible advances like that of a formula. Despite the fact that the content examination process ought to be efficient and can be a rationale well-ordered approach, it by and by ought to be versatile to the particular needs and necessities of the analyst.

To sum up, in connection with the present analysis the subjective information incorporated the data from previous years and market patterns. The subjective data analysis compromised the deconstruction of the subjective data into manageable classes, topics, patterns, and connections as per the objective of the research. As per the objectives of research, the point of the qualitative analysis of this paper was to inspect the different components of the data captured to explain concepts and to recognize themes, relationship, and patterns. By the way of reducing, organizing and the depiction of the information, through analyzation they is an attempt to comprehend,  give meaning, interpret and make a hypothesis to aid in a literature review to help the company make proper decisions in terms of having a competitive edge and perform to clients expectations (Mian, Martin,  and Vazquez-Poletti, 2013). This will help to decide the competencies and the needs of directors of the organization to manage it effectively in accordance with diverse and transforming market needs. The system for the examination of the subjective information depends on the content analysis methodology and was displayed in two segments as indicated by the idea of the capturing information.

Having analyzed the existing companies data the following were the finding

Firstly, the company did not a comprehensive job of listening to their clients or connection with them with. Clients may float away from the company, and the company did not realize it until the profits started declining. Mostly, clients do not declare their plans regardless of whether one is in a relationship business like consultant, sales or hairstyling; In most of the cases, clients may choose to change to a competitor despite the fact that everything appears to be fine. Instructions to keep your upper hand.

Secondly, challenges from competitors. They have been no competitive advantage that lasts for long; frequently, exactly when the company makes sense of its upper hand, a contender swoops in to change the game (Zikopoulos, et al 2013). Having technological advancements, better approaches for recognizing underserved niches within the current market, new marketing strategy all these are ways that competitors are always dueling to undermine each other's upper hands.

Lastly, the company is the one, which made it competitive hand go away one of it, is not meeting the customer's expectations (Zikopoulos, et al 2013). This can be caused by a continuous change of CEOs or board of directors or it can be more inconspicuous and moderate, similar to the company's culture that movements from an administration arranged, optimistic start-up to a bigger, wealthier, more complacent set up firm. Organization change in ways that are frequently intangible and this influences its upper hand.

The following are list of recommendation

1. For the company to be competitive, it should carry out double-blind research on the market to discover what really matters to their clients about the service expectations or product they are giving to ensure the directors comprehend what their clients value.
2. The company should focus on what it excels at better to any of its new (and current) business rivals. The organization, regardless of its size, financial position or industrial, needs to set aside the opportunity to reveal what genuinely makes them unique from it rivals since even the greatest organizations can disintegrate under the competition on the off chance that they do not maintain it.
3. Regardless of what inner changes happening the company should continuously carry out research on the market is a standout amongst other approaches to weather the changes. In the event that a company chooses to seek after another objective market, or if new organization administration needs to totally change the focus of the organization, at that point the directors need to guarantee that those changes are upheld by statistical surveying. This is a critical method to guarantee that the company’s employees and aim market value the things the company is offering. The company should not try to shift unless it knows the move is something the clients will value.

According to the recommendation give above the business plan that will be implemented will be anchored on the seven major points (Zikopoulos, et al 2013). Listed below

1. Business proposition – based on the products the company will expand the range of its product and improve the current existing products to meet customer expectations. Also the company will identify it major competitors and their way of doing business and how the company is going to sell its products.
2. Management team: The Company will identify a competitive and aggressive team of managers as well as the board of directors. Further it will focus on its key personal and strategic partners.
3. Marketing: The company will review how to promote its products through conducting marketing research, publicity, and pricing of its product and services.
4. Staff: They company need to conduct a thorough recruitment process of the employees it intends to employ and restructuring of the organisational structure.
5. Operations: The company will clearly distinguish the office premises as well as the infrastructure needed like websites, telecoms and IT.
6. Infrastructure: This will involve having insurance need, trading entity, accounts and lawyers.
7. Finances: The Company will be regularly involved with evaluating investment opportunities, finance, cash flow and profit and loss forecast.

Conclusion

Comprehending customers’ expectations and changing preferences is necessary for the business superior execution as well as long-haul achievement within the existing highly competitive market. It is apparent that high client loyalty encourages the fortification of the association between the organization and clients and this profound sense of collective determination has been found to be profitable. Diverse difficulties that might influence the contentment of the clients are there, yet in events that appropriately handled the organization might remain a business leader within a volatile market. The problems among others comprises of innovation as well as market turbulence, general economy, intelligence responsiveness and competition. A guide to overcome a number of these challenges comprises inspiring education for customers, information concerning customers, learning from customers as well as implicit information revolution. The distinguishing information assists in appreciating client expectations and changing preferences.

An enterprise needs to seek out beyond its direct competitors to maintain the most new industry patterns, which clients are anticipating, what the ideal condition is for specific product or service, with the aim that it might roll out the necessary improvements as well as enhancing its own industry operations.

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