Analytics Proposal

BSA 310

Analytics Proposal for Target Corporation

Casey DeCesare

Instructor: Sharon Foreman

Target Corporation is one of the largest retailers in America with stores located all around the country. They sell thousands of products ranging from light bulbs to eggs and have some of the best products around when it comes to best quality for your dollar. However, to provide the best products and services in the most efficient way analytics come into play. Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. Through the use of this data this will allow a company like Target to better know how to locate their stores and the products within them to provide the best shopping experience possible.

The main strategy of any business defines its analytical choices. Without a firm base, companies simply allocate budgets for marketing based on last year’s budget, or on which product or service performed the best in the last quarter or so. Such an approach leads to a political rather than analytical approach, where proposals that are ‘flavor of the month’ or sections that yell the loudest get the funding, rather than areas that need to develop the most. Companies like Target need to work out the pros and cons of all the appropriate analytical tools in order gain the most effective marketing mix. This can be done in three steps.

Step 1 involves Reach, Cost, Quality (RCQ) and other Heuristics. RCQ reduces each touch-point into its component parts by using structured judgment and data. Such parts include quality of engagement, number of target customers reached, and cost per unique touch-point. RCQ can be used when advanced analytical tools would not be of use, such as when data is limited, when spending is routinely consistent all year round, or in ‘always-on’ media where marginal investment effects are harder to extract.

Step 2 works with Marketing Mix Modelling or (MMM). This involves statistically linking marketing investments to other...