Insight, Analytics and the New Marketing
Predicting the unpredictable
According to an article in the New York Times today, UK supermarket chain Tesco is taking on the most daunting of statistical endeavors – predicting the British weather. “Rapidly changing weather can be a real challenge,” Jonathan Church, a Tesco spokesman, said in the article, describing the system Tesco has developed to predict the weather and the impact it has on demand. “The system successfully predicted temperature drops during July that led to a major increase in demand for soup, winter vegetables and cold-weather puddings.”
Winter veggies in July … it almost makes me miss the summers in London. Crap weather for weeks but that one day when the sun does come out makes it all worthwhile. It‘ll have everyone running to the park in ecstasy to get their pale white skins roasted. And literally everyone will have a BBQ. According to Tesco a temperature increase of 18 degrees generally triples sales of barbecue meat and increases demand for lettuce by 50 percent.
If there’s one organization able to predict the unpredictable it will be Tesco. They are the most famous example of a company that turns the data about their customers into a strategic asset. The insights they get from their data help them manage approximately four thousand stores across 5 different formats in 13 countries. Their ability to turn these insights into sales means they estimate the value of their database at $3.2bn. God knows what it will be worth if it can also predict the weather!
Comments