1a. Day-of-Week by Temperature (Interaction)
- Weekend sales tended to increase
as daytime high temperatures increased.
- In contrast,
mid-week sales tended to increase
as low temperatures became less extreme.
- The
difference is subtle but important: Extremely cold morning temperatures
on the weekend were not associated
with fewer sales (as long as it eventually turned out to be a
warm day). However, when daily low temperatures
dropped during the week, mid-week sales remained
low even if the daily high temperatures
were relatively warm.
- In summary, warm weather
may have encouraged weekend shoppers to buy *****,
whereas mid-week shoppers appeared to be more concerned
about avoiding extremely low temperatures. Further
investigation confirmed that mid-week shoppers bought
far fewer ***** when low temperatures approached or dropped below
freezing.
- This likely indicates market segmentation;
your weekend consumer audience likely differs from your weekday consumer audience
in both preference and behavior (see footnote *1).
1b. Practical Application of this Knowledge
- You may already be aware of this market segmentation. If not, you may be able to
use this information to increase sales by:
- Planning different promotions on
weekends and weekdays that specifically focus on the preferences of each consumer
audience.
- Modifying retail displays based on the day of week, [material omitted
to protect client].
- varying content of advertisements based on whether the
content is likely to be viewed during the week or over the weekend. [further discussion
omitted].
3. Precipitation / Day-of-Week / Temperature (Interaction)
- Another important interaction involved precipitation and can explained as follows:
- Regardless of the day-of-week, sales tended to be lower when it
rained.
- Sales tended to be dramatically lower on rainy weekends.
- Warmer average daily temperatures tended to offset this negative effect on sales when
it rained on weekdays.
- However, warmer temperatures
did not help offset the negative effect of rain
on sales when it rained on a Saturday
or Sunday.
- This interaction accounted for the apparently paradoxical reversals in Saturday/Sunday
buying patterns in February and March, including the extremely
low sales on a rainy Saturday,
March 18th followed by higher sales on a dry Sunday
the 19th. The following weekend, sales resumed a more common pattern where Saturday
sales exceeded Sunday sales.
- This is another clear
indication that you have two different consumer audiences: weekday and weekend shoppers.
(*1) We were unable to more thoroughly explore weekend
vs. weekday shopper
behavior because of limited data; only 18 weekends occurred between January 12th
and May 15th. Using historic sales figures (or this year's complete sales figures
after the season ends), we would be able to provide a more thorough analysis and
comparison between weekend and
weekday shopper preferences and behaviors.
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Explanation of an Interaction (click for larger images):
Wind gust speed, each day.
Whether or not it was a weekend.
The interaction between wind gust speed and weekends.
The resulting interaction is obtained
by multiplying the two original variables,
and helps
isolate the effect of wind gusts on weekend sales, while ignoring the
effect of wind gusts on sales during the week.
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