Nestle Combines Retail Channels with Tesco

Also should give new kinds of data.

Nestlé connects in-store and online media in retailwire, with expert comments.  by Dale Buss

Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the bi-monthly e-zine, CPGmatters.

Nestlé partnered with Tesco to help launch the dunnhumby media platform that promises to bring continual, consistent and contextual communications with shoppers within and outside the store.

Nestlé worked with dunnhumby media in the U.K. to promote the launch of a new on-pack promotion to Tesco customers across owned and paid channels, including in-store, mobile, online and out-of-home. The insights-driven media plan reached 5.8 million customers and drove an 11 percent increase in sales.   ... "

Kroger and Embedded Machine Learning Analytics

Good to see how much work Kroger is doing in advanced analytics, congrats to my friends there, we worked with them in the innovation area, always following them for leading tech.  This is a leading direction, good to see Kroger leading the way in making the business needs known and investing in solutions.

84.51° Builds a Machine Learning Machine for Kroger
By Tom Davenport , Forbes Contributor

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Machine learning is a great way to extract maximum predictive or categorization value from a large volume of structured data. The idea (at least for “supervised learning,” by far the most common type in business) is to train a model on a one set of labeled data and then use the resulting models to make predictions or classifications on data where we don’t know the outcome. The approach works well in concept, but it can be labor-intensive to develop and deploy the models.

One company, however, is rapidly developing a “machine learning machine” that can build and deploy very large numbers of models with relatively little human intervention. You may have heard of dunnhumby, a UK-based analytics company that’s owned by the big retailer Tesco. dunnhumby had a US joint venture with Kroger named dunnhumbyUSA. In 2015 Kroger purchased dunnhumbyUSA and named it 84.51°. The name coincides with the location of its Cincinnati headquarters and is a tribute to the longitudinal analytics the company employs. But 84.51° also analyzes data like a finely-tuned machine.  .... "   

 (read the rest for details of the embedding)

Tesco fails to sell DunnHumby

Considerable local presence, with their US HQ, they hire many entry level data analysts.  We used many of DunnHumby's services for targeted coupons.

Tesco’s Prophecy Proves Costly as Sale of Dunnhumby Falls Flat
Tesco's Dunnhumby specialises in predicting buying habits. Unfortunately for Britain’s largest retailer, it couldn’t foresee that nobody would stump up the cash it wanted for the data-analytics unit.

Since Tesco put the company on the block nine months ago, Dunnhumby has become a less attractive asset. The April dissolution of a joint venture with American supermarket chain Kroger Co. meant Dunnhumby’s US arm could pitch other grocers for new business, but at the same time it cut off a steady income stream from a high profile client. .... " 

Kroger Buys most of Dunnhumby USA

In Cincinnati.com:    It will be interesting to see how this changes how Kroger utilizes analytical methodologies.

" .... The Kroger Co. said Monday it will buy much of dunnhumbyUSA from the United Kingdom-based analytics firm and create a new consumer insights subsidiary called 84.51°, effective immediately. The number is a reference to the longitude of the new subsidiary's location.

About 500 former dunnhumbyUSA workers – including more than 450 locally – will become employees of the independently operated Kroger unit and the retailer will occupy its newly constructed headquarters at Fifth and Race streets in Downtown.

Newly named 84.51 CEO Stuart Aitken said he hopes the new consumer insights arm of Kroger will continue to grow at the same rate or that it will speed up. .... "  

DunnHumby press release on the Kroger restructure.

Kroger Invests Beyond Grocery

In Barrons:   Summarizes a number of data oriented plays.  " ... No. 2 food retailer Kroger is trying to break out of mass retail by investing in everything from e-commerce to natural foods. The stock could rise 20%. ... “On the conventional side of the channel, Kroger is the best example of an unconventional conventional,” says Sinisi, who recently initiated coverage with a Buy rating. What does he mean? For 11 years, Kroger has been using United Kingdom–based dunnhumby to analyze shopping data through its loyalty card—a technique that dunnhumby developed at beleaguered U.K. grocer Tesco (TSCO.UK). The goal: tailor specific coupons to individuals. Dunnhumby says it can analyze “what customers want, where they want it, and how much they’re willing to pay for it.”  ... ' 

Predicting Product Success

Predicting Product Launch success.  We worked on this using a number of simulation based methods.  Interesting case study here:   " ... Back in May, Kaggle ran a competition with hack/reduce and dunnhumby focused on using big data predictive analysis on product launches. The objective: to discover how to predict the level of success or failure of a product by looking at the first few weeks of sales. Called the “Product launch challenge” the hackathon brought in quite a few interested hacker and data science teams to try their hand at the problem. ... " 

Kroger Knows Your Shopping Habits

In Forbes:  Good overview of what is fairly common practice in the use of analytics in retail/CPG today. " ... Working with dunnhumby, the customer data specialist which so impressed the UK’s Tesco that the grocer bought the firm, Kroger tracks each customer as an individual.... 

Those quarterly mailers contain 12 coupons specific to an individual household and are carefully designed. The upper left may offer a slightly esoteric product like a special cheese, while Tide may be lower on the flyer and the last two coupons might be experiments, such as adjacent products — a purchaser of baby food who doesn’t buy diapers might see an offer for diapers, for example. Eighty percent of dunnhumby’s effort is focused on what it knows about a customer and 20 percent is focused on discovery. ... " 

DunnHumby Seeks to Invest in Cincinnati Startups

As they progress with their downtown US Headquarters facility:

" ... Look for data analysis firm Dunnhumby’s new seed-stage venture fund to invest in Cincinnati startup companies. Dunnhumby, whose U.S. headquarters are in downtown Cincinnati, announced this week the creation of Dunnhumby Ventures to invest in retail technology. ... "

Press release.

DunHumby Maps Price Sensitivity

In Research:  " ...According to new research from Dunnhumby, a consumer’s sensitivity to price greatly influences their response to advertising tactics and the channel of delivery. Justin Petty, vice-president of media solutions, explains what this might mean for marketers and decision makers.... " 

DunnHumby Buys Standard Analytics

Just announced.  A further indication of movement of more data gathering and integrating companies moving towards the use of stronger predictive analytics.    " ... Dunnhumby said the acquisition would allow it to offer clients greater understanding of customer purchasing patterns and behaviours through Standard Analytics’ predictive sales modelling and real-time out of stock alerts. ... " 

Analytics Summit this Friday

Last chance, this Friday .... contact numbers below ... I unfortunately will be out of town, but looks to be good.

" ... Analytics Summit 2013  will be held on May 31, 8:15AM-5:00PM at the University of Cincinnati. Analytics Summit 2013 is the premiere analytics event of the year sponsored by the Center for Business Analytics in the Carl H. Lindner College of Business at the University of Cincinnati. The theme of the event is "Real-World Impact from Business Analytics." 

The Summit will feature a keynote presentation by renowned thought-leader Tom Davenport, best-selling author of Competing on Analytics. The event also includes day-long tracks in the specialized areas of Consumer/Retail Analytics, Finance & Insurance Analytics, Healthcare Analytics, HR Analytics and Supply Chain & Logistics Analytics. Track speakers include representatives from Procter & Gamble, Fifth Third Bank, dunnhumby, Kroger Co, Mercer, Cincinnati Children's Hospital, and many more. 

To register for this event, please visit: http://www.regonline.com/analyticssummit2013. The website includes details on location, lodging options, agenda, etc. 

For more information, please see the website linked above or contact Tricia Burger at tricia.burger@uc.edu or (513) 556-7140.

UC Analytics Summit 2013

" ... Analytics Summit 2013  will be held on May 31, 8:15AM-5:00PM at the University of Cincinnati. Analytics Summit 2013 is the premiere analytics event of the year sponsored by the Center for Business Analytics in the Carl H. Lindner College of Business at the University of Cincinnati. The theme of the event is "Real-World Impact from Business Analytics." 

The Summit will feature a keynote presentation by renowned thought-leader Tom Davenport, best-selling author of Competing on Analytics. The event also includes day-long tracks in the specialized areas of Consumer/Retail Analytics, Finance & Insurance Analytics, Healthcare Analytics, HR Analytics and Supply Chain & Logistics Analytics. Track speakers include representatives from Procter & Gamble, Fifth Third Bank, dunnhumby, Kroger Co, Mercer, Cincinnati Children's Hospital, and many more. 

To register for this event, please visit: http://www.regonline.com/analyticssummit2013. The website includes details on location, lodging options, agenda, etc. 

For more information, please see the website linked above or contact Tricia Burger at tricia.burger@uc.edu or (513) 556-7140.

DunnHumby and BzzAgent Pulse

In AdAge:    Kroger and Unilever are among the pleased users.  Some good detail here:  " ... Pulse draws data not just from the million BzzAgents, but also from the Dunnhumby Continuous Panel, a group of 6 million households drawn from the Kroger shopper database and normalized to provide a national view of product sales, he said. ...  Mr. Bradley said BzzAgent Pulse has proved useful across Unilever functional areas -- including sales, brand marketing, market research and research and development. ... "

Shopper Marketing

New book: Shopper Marketing: How to Increase Purchase Decisions at the Point of Sale, by Markus Stahlberg.    On my list to read.   Contains a chapter by Herb Sorensen regarding his Atlas store category simulation system that we examined when it first came out.     " ... Shopper Marketing explores the subject of focused marketing initiatives aimed at browsers and shoppers who are in-store and can be influenced in their final buying decisions. Now with a new foreword by Philip Kotler this second edition features 12 brand new articles that reflect the current changes in the fast growing area, focusing specifically on the international scope, the online presence and the future of shopper marketing.   Written by 35 experts from top companies around the world including dunnhumbyUSA, Millward Brown, Tesco’s Fresh & Easy, MARS Advertising, Nestlé and author, CEO and president of Envirosell, Paco Underhilll, Shopper Marketing shows the most effective ways of converting shoppers into buyers at the point of purchase. ... " 

Site Visits and Store Visits

A study linking brand site web site visits and in-store spending.  " ... According to a recent study, conducted by Accenture, comScore and dunnhumby USA, people who visit the websites of consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands end up purchasing 37 percent moreworth of goods from the brand in question in brick-and-mortar retail establishments than people who don’t visit such sites.... "

DunnhumbyUSA CEO Leads by example

In the local press: good article on Dunnhumby USA's corporate culture, style and analytic approaches used to track shopper loyalty.  I was part of an early meeting with them, which was met with skepticism,  but they have shown themselves to be very competent at the task.

Dunnhumby Acquires BzzAgent

BzzAgent is a company that seeks to get people talk about brands.They are being acquired by loyalty data agent Dunnhumby.  BzzAgent reminds, in name and direction, of a  company called PlanetFeedback, which I was involved with a number of years ago and was eventually folded into Nielsen.  Nice to see that Dunnhumby is modernizing its channels.