Background Data
The Grupo Pao de Acucar is the biggest retail network in Brazil. It owns and controls a series of branded retail stores having more than 140 000 employees and 1 800 stores. In 2009, its gross revenue was BRL 26 billion (USD 18 billion).
Strategic Targets
- Understand what are the products retail customers purchase traditionaly together (basket definition).
- Define demographic, regional and brand clusters and find out repeatable purchase behaviours.
- Reorganize shelf presentation based on findings. Target: increase revenue.
My influence
- Planned and implemented algorithms for processing, clustering and testing checkout data.
- Organized checkout data collection and presentation allowing sorting managers to quickly crosscheck behaviours and test hypothesis.
Some numbers
- There were more than 16 billion individual checkouts to be processed.
- More than 24 stores scattered over 18 states and grouped in 4 retail brands were part of the sample data.
- Total processing time from start to finish was 269 hours.
- It is assumed that this concentrated effort was one of the key ingredients for the company's growth and success in the subsequent years.