For the longest time, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies were limited mostly to mass marketing, unable to address consumers directly. That has changed, and with the emergence of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), understanding and predicting consumer behavior is now more…
Retail market or store testing has been a decision tool for many decades. But tests are often not conducted in a manner which produces reliable results. Care must be taken in the selection of test and control groups in making…
The title of the post was created by ChatGPT 4.0, a Generative AI Large Language Model (LLM) . In fact, it wrote most of this post. Recent (August 2023) articles, such as "America's biggest brands rethink price hikes in disinflation…
The Spring 2023 edition of the Journal of Business Forecasting features an article co-authored by First Analytics and The Hershey Company. It shows compelling accuracy results by focusing on some novel hierarchical forecasting methods. From the abstract: Forecasting is traditionally…
First Analytics will be co-presenting with Land-O-Lakes at the upcoming Institute of Business Forecasting Predictive Analytics and Forecasting conference. The event will be held in New Orleans, April 25th through 27th, 2023. We will discuss a model that has its…
The title of this post is a quote credited to Winston Churchill, although the attribution is questionable. It conveys the notion that dramatic events generate new insights and create opportunities for growth. Put another way, "look for the silver lining."…
We have previously written about the perils of third-party data in forecasting. The notion that more data helps improve forecasting is true in principle, albeit in practice it can make things worse. An article published in the fourth quarter 2022…
Many have touted the inclusion of data from outside the firm as a way to improve forecast accuracy. The idea is that, with the incorporation of more information to explain the demand signal, forecasts are bound to be better. In…
After many months of angst about rapidly rising commodity prices, indications are that they are coming back down. This presents an opportunity for a data-driven business that uses advanced analytics. Though there is pain in operating a supply chain under…
Following up with our infocomic on our work in the rail industry, here is another fun little illustration depicting some of the work we at First Analytics have done. This one focuses on consumer products (including CPG) and retail. These…