Introduction:

The retail sector has long been one of the most competitive and fast-paced in the economy,
with businesses making concerted efforts to innovate and provide superior service to their
customers. As a result, retail has become one of the most exciting and cutthroat markets to
work in today. A country that exemplifies this phenomenon is the United States of America.
Due to the rise of e-commerce and the importance of data analytics in modern decision-
making, the industry has been shaken up considerably in recent years. Both of these changes
have occurred in the last few years. Because of these two factors, data analytics' role in the
decision-making process has grown in importance. Traditional retailers, sometimes referred
to as "brick-and-mortar stores," have a greater difficulty in today's market when they must
also oversee virtual stores and marketplaces.
One such retailer has stores in several nations and offers a wide selection of products,
including electronics, clothing, food, and home decor. You may buy these items wherever
you like, even online. All of the company's retail outlets carry and sell these products. The
retail industry is very competitive, and this corporation must make educated decisions in
order to stay ahead of its rivals in each country where it operates.
Current sales estimates, as well as decisions about inventory management, price strategies,
and promotional activities, are all informed by historical sales data. This helps the business
achieve its profit goals while limiting potential losses. This allows the company to make
more accurate estimates of future income. Furthermore, they collect information on what
customers do to improve the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. However, this
approach is insufficient in the fast-paced environment of modern retail.
The company has been urged to conduct an audit of its primary data streams and sources,
establish a foundation for data analytics, expand upon the data that is already available, and
ensure compliance with data protection and ethical assurance regulations. The proposed
solutions are as follows. A favourable consequence would be an enhancement of the
company's decision-making process as a result of this.
The decision-making process in its entirety is incorporated into the proposed framework,
from the analysis of currently observable data to the analysis of additional types of data that
may be gathered, saved, and processed with the intention of supplementing the information
that is already available in order to improve the decision-making process. This study
considers both the now observable data and any other types of data that may be acquired,
stored, and analysed in the future. The organisation can use this framework to learn more
about customers' feelings, preferences, and actions, as well as to improve its ability to
forecast product demand and inventory management by responding swiftly to fluctuations in
supply and demand.
The architecture for data analytics must incorporate procedures for cleansing, standardising,
and verifying the data to ensure its high quality. The framework must account for these
procedures. As part of the normalisation process, the data should be converted to a format
that is generally used for the purpose of conducting analysis. This will guarantee that the
statistics are shown in the most accurate light. This step is essential to the process and must
be included. For the validation to be complete, the data must first pass through a method that
checks for consistency, correctness, and completeness. This step is essential before
proceeding with the rest of the procedure.
In addition, the company must use a plethora of other types of data, including information
gathered from social media platforms, data regarding website traffic, data regarding the
weather, and data regarding the company's rivals. The corporation might use this extra data to
better respond to customers' wants and requirements by adjusting its stock, prices, and
marketing campaigns.
If it wants to keep its reputation for ethics and its customers' personal data safe, it must
adhere to all current data protection and privacy requirements. Only then will they be able to
protect client privacy without compromising on their commitment to ethics. It is the
company's responsibility to ensure that personal information is collected, processed, and kept
in a safe and lawful manner, that it is used only for the intended purpose, and that it is not
disclosed to or sold to any outside parties without the user's consent. All of these duties come
within the larger obligation of the corporation to ensure the lawfulness of data collection,
processing, and storage. All of these duties fall under the umbrella duty of the organisation
ensuring the morality of data collection, processing, and storage at every stage. This duty is
embedded within the wider field of study known as "data ethics."
Retailers may be found catering to a dizzying array of specialisations, selling everything from
apparel to gadgets and beyond. The products sold by these businesses span the entire gamut,
from clothing to gadgets to everything in between. These kinds of specialised markets exist
within the larger retail industry. The retail sector is quite extensive, encompassing several
specialist fields. Statista predicts that by 2023, the retail industry throughout the world would
be worth a total of $31.88 trillion. The data used for this projection was generously provided
by Statista. Given the rise of e-commerce and the increasing value of data analytics in
informing business decisions, it is crucial for retailers to preserve their competitive edge.
In conclusion, the supplied data analytics platform has the potential to significantly improve
the decision-making process inside the selected retail organisation. The offered structure
allows for the completion of this task. It is possible to achieve this goal by employing the
framework that has been outlined here. Customers' habits, product demand, inventory needs,
and price policies might all be better understood with this data at hand. However, the
integrity of the data, the security of the data, and the continued adherence to ethical principles
can only be ensured if the company abides by all applicable laws.

Part 2:
Examining both financial and non-financial data, this research hopes to shed light on how an
organisation arrives at its strategic decisions. To better understand the process is central to
this study's objectives. Sales and inventory levels are examples of financial data, whereas
customer information, marketing strategies, and competitive analysis are examples of non-
financial data. Information on financial statements is also part of the financial data. Both
types of information are included in the financial records. The article draws attention to a
critical issue that has to be resolved for the company's commercial activities to continue, and
it suggests a strategy for doing data analysis by making use of Python to provide an answer to
the topic.
With this research, we hope to answer the question, "Which product categories and sub-
categories are the most profitable for the organisation, and how can the organisation increase
sales in these categories while simultaneously minimising costs?" This is a critical question
for any business, and the answers to these questions will be crucial to the success of any
enterprise. This is a crucial concern because, as previously said, the company can put its
efforts and resources to better use by focusing on the most profitable product categories and
sub-categories. Moreover, cutting costs associated with things that offer a lower return on
investment may further improve the company's profitability.
The following are some of the strategic issues that businesses must address in order to
preserve their profitability and competitiveness in their particular markets:
1. What are the most popular products or categories that customers buy, and how can we
increase the visibility or promotion of these products to boost sales?
2. Which cities or regions have the highest sales, and how can we expand our reach into
these areas or target similar regions to increase sales overall?
3. How does the choice of ship mode (e.g., standard, express) impact customer
satisfaction and repeat purchases, and how can we optimize our shipping processes to
improve sales?
4. Are there specific customer segments that are particularly lucrative, and how can we
tailor our marketing and sales strategies to target these groups more effectively?
Using the Dataset to Conduct Strategic Question Analysis:
We will analyse the sales data from the provided dataset to answer one of the previously
mentioned critical business questions: "What are the most profitable product categories and
sub-categories for the organisation, and how can the organisation increase sales in these
categories while minimising costs?" We'll conduct this to find out "What are the most
profitable product categories and sub-categories for the organisation?" This analysis will
make use of the dataset's columns, such as Category and Sub-Category, as well as Sales. In
addition, we may investigate additional factors such as client subgroups, geographic
locations, and pricing strategies to identify opportunities to grow our customer base and
profitability.
Approach:
Our dataset will include fields like "Category," "Sub-Category," and "Sales," all of which will
be put to use in an effort to provide insight into this business challenge. In order to make
more informed business decisions, we will be analysing sales data to determine which
product groups and niches generate the most revenue. Furthermore, we will investigate
factors like customer demographics, customer geographies, and pricing strategies to find
openings for increasing our company's revenue and profit margins.
Python will be our go-to language for doing analyses on this data collection. Python is a
popular data analysis language because it provides a wealth of libraries and tools that can be
used for both the analysis of data and the presentation of the findings of the study. To do
analysis and visualisation of data, we will use tools like Pandas and Matplotlib. We will use
the following procedures to solve the issue that has occurred in the company:
Cleaning the Data: We will clean the data by eliminating any duplicates or missing
information to make sure it is accurate. Because of this, we can check if the information is
reliable.
Data Exploration: At this point, we will examine the dataset in order to learn more about it
and spot any underlying patterns or trends.
We'll be conducting an analysis of the data to determine the most profitable product groups
and subgroups so that we can focus our efforts there. To find ways to boost revenue and
profit, we'll also study factors like consumer demographics, geographic location, and pricing
policies. Growing our share of the market or boosting our profit margins are two examples.
Data visualisation: We'll create visualisations to clearly present and discuss the findings of
our investigation. We'll be able to share our results with more people this way.