Author : James B. Coles
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 93 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (1 download)
Book Synopsis Cross-channel Predictive Analytics for Retail Distribution Decisions by : James B. Coles
Download or read book Cross-channel Predictive Analytics for Retail Distribution Decisions written by James B. Coles and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Distribution demand forecasting at Zara currently considers historical sales of products modified by expert knowledge inputs in an algorithm developed to calculate the shipment required to meet demand for the next sales period. In 2010, the introduction of Zara.com provided customers an additional channel to complete purchases and interact with the brand while providing Zara significant insight into changing customer preferences to supplement the expert knowledge of the Zara team. This thesis investigates the utility of the data collected in the online sales channel for increasing the accuracy of the distribution demand forecasts. Two forecast types are considered: Initial Shipments for which no historical data exists, and Replenishment Shipments which have historical data. Forecasts are performed for both brick-and-mortar and e-commerce sales channels to demonstrate cross-channel utility of the data. The study presents a review of available datasets to identify those of potential interest and describes meaningful features engineered from raw datasets. By applying machine learning algorithms, significant features are identified and a predictive model is developed demonstrating significant WMAPE improvement for initial shipments to brick-and-mortar stores ( 0.23), moderate improvement for replenishment shipments to e-commerce ( 0.05) and limited improvement for replenishments to brick-and-mortar stores (