AUGUST - 2022retailtechinsights.com8In My OPINIONCOVID has driven fundamental shifts in consumer behaviours resulting in more polarised consumer segments driven by different drivers and responsiveness to marketing/sales levers. Given the changing dynamics, the marketing questions are where the future growth will come from, how to sweat the investments more, how to predict the future consumer behaviours to drive sales. Machine Learning (ML) has been instrumental in addressing these challenges, driving business impact, and bringing certainty to uncertainty which I have spoken about earlier. The business impact of these applications will be enhanced with evolutions in ML. This article outlines these eight likely ML evolutions in the next 12-18 months. Beyond Prediction1. From Predicting the Future of a Known Past to that of an Unknown Past: Whilst the uncertainties imposed by COVID in predicting the future consumer demand has been addressed by leveraging ML, what remains unresolved is the prediction by consumer segments where sales data does not exist. Solving this challenge will help to move from predicting the consumer demand to shaping the future consumer demand. Evolutions in neural network and game theory applications are helping address this challenge.2. From Prediction to Shaping Future Sales: Consumer Lifetime Value of categories has reduced significantly in FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) since the onset of COVID. There are categories with significantly increased consumption in 2020 but the rate of increase will decelerate in 2021. The By Sunando Das, CMI Director, Predictive Marketing and Retail Analytics, Unilever ULVR (LON)FROM PREDICTION TO FORESEEING AND SHAPING THE FUTURE: THE REQUIRED EVOLUTIONS IN MACHINE LEARNING Sunando Das
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