Business application for sales transaction data by using genome analysis technology

Abstract

We have recently developed an E-BONSAI (Extended BONSAI) for discovering useful knowledge from time-series purchase transaction data, developed by improving and adding new features to a machine learning algorithm for analyzing string pattern such amino acid sequence, BONSAI, proposed by Shimozono et al. in 1994. E-BONSAI we developed can create a good decision tree to classify positive and negative data for records whose attributes are either numerical, categorical or string patterns while other methods such as C5.0 and CART cannot deal with string patterns directly. We shall demonstrate advantages of E-BONSAI over existing methods for forecasting future demands by applying the methods to real business data. To demonstrate an advantage of E-BONSAI for business application, it is significant to evaluate it from the two perspectives. The first is the objective and technical perspective such as the prediction accuracy. The second is the management perspective such as the interpreterability to create new business action. Applying the E-BONSAI to forecast how long new products survive in instant noodle market in Japan, we have succeeded in attaining high prediction ability and discovering useful knowledge for domain experts. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.