A simple example of data mining, often called Market Basket Analysis, is its use for retail sales. If a clothing store records the purchases of customers, a data mining system could identify those customers who favour silk shirts over cotton ones. Another is that of a supermarket chain who, through analysis of transactions over a long period of time, found that beer and diapers were often bought together. Although explaining this relationship may be difficult, taking advantage of it is easier, for example by placing the high-profit diapers in the store close to the high-profit beers. (This example is questioned at Beer and Nappies -- A Data Mining Urban Legend.) The two examples above deal with association rules within transaction-based data. Not all data is transaction based and logical or inexact rules may also be present within a database. In a manufacturing application, an inexact rule may state that 73% of products which have a specific defect or problem, will develop a secondary problem within the next 6 months.
More examples
One Midwest grocery chain used the data mining capacity of Oracle software to analyze local buying patterns. They discovered that when men bought diapers on Thursdays and Saturdays, they also tended to buy beer. Further analysis showed that these shoppers typically did their weekly grocery shopping on Saturdays. On Thursdays, however, they only bought a few items. The retailer concluded that they purchased the beer to have it available for the upcoming weekend. The grocery chain could use this newly discovered information in various ways to increase revenue. For example, they could move the beer display closer to the diaper display. And, they could make sure beer and diapers were sold at full price on Thursdays.
Bass Brewers is the leading beer producer in the UK and has a 23% of the market. The company has a reputation for great brands and good service but realised the importance of information in order to maintain a lead in the UK beer market. We've been brewing beer since 1777, with increased competition comes a demand to make faster, better informed decisions. Mike Fisher, IS director, Bass Brewers Bass decided to gather the data into a data warehouse on a system so that the users i.e. the decision-makers could have consistent, reliable, online information. Prior to this users could expect a turn around of 24 hours but with the new system the answers should be returned interactively. For the first time, people will be able to do data mining - ask questions we never dreamt we could get the answers to, look for patterns among the data we could never recognise before. Nigel Rowley, Information Infrastructure manager This commitment to data mining has given Bass a competitive edge when it comes to identifying market trends and taking advantage of this.
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