1.1 Company Introduction: Bayer's official flagship store (Bayer, headquartered in Leverkusen, Germany, has 750 stores in 200 locations on six continents) Production plant; with 120,000 employees and 350 branches, almost all over the world. Polymers, medicine and health care, chemicals and agriculture are the company's four pillar industries. The company's product categories exceed 10,000).
1.2 Project Goal: Identify market opportunities for business growth.
1.3 Product Line:
Bayer's official flagship store online sales data in the Years 2015-2018:
Rodenticide niche market:
- Cockroach
- Insect
- Mite
- Lice
- Rodent
3.1 Since the time column is from November 2015 to October 2018, we need the complete data for each month from 2016 to 2018. This is because it is convenient to analyze the product from the perspective of annual change.
3.2 We can use linear regression to predict that for each sub-category market, use the sales amount in November/December of 2015, 2016, and 2017 to predict the corresponding month of 2018.
In the past three years, there has been a growth trend, and the entire market tends to grow and mature.
4.1 Sub-categories Market
Intuitively, rodenticides and mosquito repellent have a greater market opportunities.
It can be seen that for rodenticides and anti-moth tablets, the growth rate is relatively stable, while others have decreased or even become negative.
4.2 Conclusion for Pesticide Market
- The overall pesticide market is in a stage of rapid growth and tends to grow to maturity.
- The market share of rodenticide is relatively large (more than 60%), which is about twice that of the second mosquito repellent, and the market growth rate is close to 40%. In the BCG growth-share matrix, it can be considered as a star product category, which requires continuous investment and focus.
5.1 Business Logic
a. After the sub-category market is determined (rodenticide market): determine the most popular product categories in the rodenticide market –> subdivide price segments –> attribute further analysis:
What kind of price is the main market, and what kind of goods are in line with the public's interest?
b. Product Positioning for Different Purposes
-Traffic Product: The product price is low and the profit margin is almost zero. The purpose is to attract traffic.
-Profitable Product: Reasonably priced, the source of profit.
-Branded Product: Expensive, prestige goods or luxury goods.
c. Product Planning
-Points to consider in product planning: price, product features, user preference, product demand, etc.
5.2 Product Category
Explore the distribution of the total 'sales' for each product 'category' to represent the market distribution.
It can be seen that the key market to be analyzed is rodent and cockroach control, here I chosen rodent.
5.3 Category Analysis
1. Select the rodent data in 'category' for further analysis then divide the 'price' to obtain several price ranges.
2. Calculate for each price range: total sales, sales ratio, total number of products, proportion of products, average product sales, and relative competitiveness
3. Formula for relative competitiveness: 1-(xi – min(x)) / (max(x) – min(x))
-The results are in descending order of product sales, but the relative competitiveness is in ascending order where the proportion of sales can be known as market share.
-It can be seen that 0-50 has large market capacity, high competition, and large-capacity market (compared to 50-100, small capacity, slightly less competition) 200-250, small competition, a high-priced market, which is an opportunity point.
5.4 Conclusion for Niche Market
The 200-250 price segment's products have a high market share and low relative competition, which represents an opportunity. Can consider increasing the investment in order to expand the business for the 200-250 price segment's products.