Book Image

The Art of Data-Driven Business

By : Alan Bernardo Palacio
Book Image

The Art of Data-Driven Business

By: Alan Bernardo Palacio

Overview of this book

One of the most valuable contributions of data science is toward helping businesses make the right decisions. Understanding this complicated confluence of two disparate worlds, as well as a fiercely competitive market, calls for all the guidance you can get. The Art of Data-Driven Business is your invaluable guide to gaining a business-driven perspective, as well as leveraging the power of machine learning (ML) to guide decision-making in your business. This book provides a common ground of discussion for several profiles within a company. You’ll begin by looking at how to use Python and its many libraries for machine learning. Experienced data scientists may want to skip this short introduction, but you’ll soon get to the meat of the book and explore the many and varied ways ML with Python can be applied to the domain of business decisions through real-world business problems that you can tackle by yourself. As you advance, you’ll gain practical insights into the value that ML can provide to your business, as well as the technical ability to apply a wide variety of tried-and-tested ML methods. By the end of this Python book, you’ll have learned the value of basing your business decisions on data-driven methodologies and have developed the Python skills needed to apply what you’ve learned in the real world.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Part 1: Data Analytics and Forecasting with Python
4
Part 2: Market and Customer Insights
9
Part 3: Operation and Pricing Optimization

Creating effective markdowns

A markdown is a devaluation of a product because it cannot be sold at the original selling price. An example of a discount would be if you have an item that after a month of slow sales you decide to discount by 20%. Even if you just lost revenue, it also invites more people to buy it at a lower price. Since the item didn’t originally sell well, offering a good discounted price can often lead to sales that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. However, you will often find that you need to pursue your markdown strategies based on slow sales, moving products from 20% to 30%, 40%, and more as needed. Timing is particularly important because you want to sell the product while it is still relevant to the season, trends, and more.

Markdowns need to be differentiated from discounts. In retail, a discount is a reduction in the price of an item or transaction based on the type of customer who is buying. The employee discount, senior discount, and frequent...