AStudyonMarketKnowledgeDiscoveryinRetailIndustry

[[abstract]]在21世紀的知識經濟時代，知識的創造、流通、加值、分享及再利用，已經成為目前經濟活動的原動力，因此對業者而言取得決策的商情知識是一件刻不容緩的事，它可以幫助企業在競爭激烈且瞬息萬變的環境中掌握競爭優勢。研究指出企業的管理者及決策者他們最迫切及最希望取得的商情知識，首要就是與顧客相關的知識，再者就是與市場經營相關的知識。而流通零售業是台灣當前的明星產業，加上電子商務的推波助瀾之下，資訊的即時性和通透性就更顯重要，因此我們就以流通零售業態中的便利商店和連鎖超市進行商情知識發現的研究。 便利商店在三十幾坪的賣場裡，每天進入門市消費的顧客平均七至八百人次，所帶來的商機實不容小覷。面對每天來來往往形形色色的顧客，對商店內上千種的產品各有其不同的偏好，因而衍生出不同的消費習慣，是以業者欲掌握商機，需首重顧客消費行為的了解，方能據以進行目標行銷，以提高銷貨量及顧客滿意度，使業者的利潤最大化。為此，本研究將以國內某知名便利商店為對象，導入知識發現方法論，由顧客消費交易記錄的原始資料，運用資料探勘中關聯性法則的技術，依消費時間與客層別屬性分析不同時段以及不同性別、年齡層顧客的特徵，試圖挖掘出有意義的知識法則，並做消費行為的深入分析與探討。在研究過程中，我們特別專注於克服資料量不足的議題上。實證結果顯示，經由適當工具的應用以及領域專家知識的經驗分享，仍可在有限的資料中，有效地找出隱藏的珍貴商情知識。 連鎖超市其營業所分處於不同的地理區域，有各自的商圈和特性，因此我們必須針對市場進行市場區隔。由於來源資料庫裡的關聯表記錄結構性低且數量龐大，所以將各個歷史資料表彙總，先期建置商業資料倉儲，再導入知識發現方法論，運用資料歸納、分類與分群的資料探勘技術，以區域、類別、時間三個維度，進行挖掘並深入分析探討。並建置一流通業知識管理決策支援的線上系統，提供決策者友善且彈性的操作界面，可以即時取得適時、適地的商情知識；協助業者能早一步洞悉市場的情勢及動向，有充裕的反應時間即早準備並擬定策略，而在競爭市場取得先機。[[abstract]]The 21st century is a knowledge-intensive society, the creation of knowledge, its distribution, value adding, channeling and re-use have already become the engine of growth for the economy. Hence, the acquisition of marketing plan and business intelligence is of utmost urgency and importance for the businessman. Research has indicated that the most critical and important market intelligence and information that decision maker and operational executive of an enterprise are looking for is the information on customers and the information related to market operation as well. In this thesis, we focus on the convenient stores sector and super market chain sector within the distribution and retail industry to facilitate the study on market intelligence and knowledge discovery. Convenient stores are 700 to 800 customers on average stop by each store everyday to buy things and the business opportunity presented thus should not be underestimated or ignored. The operators of the convenient stores must be able to gather enough information pertaining to customers preference, habits, wants and demands in order to make targeted promotion of certain popular items and increase more sales volume and improve customer satisfaction, this will in turn maximize the profits of the operators. In this study, we conduct a case study on a famous convenient store chains in Taiwan and apply the overwhelming knowledge discovery methodology to achieve the research goal. We perform association rule discovery to uncover the hidden patterns from the raw data and by analyzing the time of purchase and consumer characteristics of the sales data, we can differentiate sales data according to the consumer''s sex, age, time of purchase and consumer demographics. The experimental results demonstrate that the derived useful knowledge from the information can help the store study analyze consumer behavior in depth. In this study, we pay special attention to the issue of overcoming the problem of insufficient data. The practical experiment has proven that by using suitable tools and consulting experienced experts in specialized fields to analyze the data, one still can extract valuable market intelligence and useful information hidden in the limited of data. Supermarket chains that are located in different geographical areas has their own market domain and unique characteristics, hence we have to differentiate the different markets by using market segmentation. In the second part of this thesis, we apply classification and clustering techniques in data mining to analyze and probe deeply through the dimension of zone, product class and time of the transaction database. Since the relation table of the database has a lot of unstructured data records, we first aggregate the history tables and build up the data warehouse, then construct a Web-based decision support system in which the model base is supported by the outcomes of the warehousing and mining. The decision support system provides decision makers a friendly and flexible interface to acquire real-time and on—the-spot business intelligence and information, obtain an early feeling of the market direction and situation, to have adequate time to make timely preparation and formulate strategy in order to gain initiative and an edge in the market competition