Association Rules

The purpose of this assignment is to perform association rules
analysis to determine whether or not the information generated can be
used to address a specific business problem.

For this assignment, you will use the “Bakery” data set from the
Topic Materials. Most data categories are self-explanatory. Clarifying
notes are as follows.

1. ReceiptID: Unique receipt ID (note that all items with the same receipt ID were purchased together)
2. Item: Name of the food item that was purchased

A bakery is interested in increasing sales by optimally displaying
and arranging its various baked goods and drinks. The bakery would like
to know which items are typically purchased together so it can place the
correlated items closer together in its display cases. The bakery has
randomly selected 1,000 receipts and compiled a list of items that were
purchased together for each receipt.

As an analyst, you have been asked to examine the data, summarize
your findings, and recommend how the bakery can use these findings to
strategically arrange its bakery products to increase sales. Use
associative rules analysis to explore the various dependencies among
purchased items. Use the Apriori method to do the analysis with a
minimum antecedent support of 4%, minimum confidence of 70%, and maximum
number of antecedents of 5. Analyze and interpret several of the
resulting rules. Present your finding in the form of a 250-word
executive summary that includes relevant data, charts, and tables, and
addresses the following.

Question 1: How would you explain the
concepts of support, confidence, and lift to an executive who is
unfamiliar with association rules analysis? Include the Apriori method
output chart when submitting the answer.

Question 2: What would you say about the support of the rules derived from the Apriori analysis?

Question 3: If both an apple tart and an
apple Danish were purchased, how likely is it that an apple croissant is
also purchased? Explain your answer.

Question 4: Does it make sense for the
bakery to place all of its apple-flavored items together in the display
or is it better to spread them out in the display? Explain why.

Question 5: If the bakery wanted to increase the sales of cherry soda, what cross-promotional offers could it employ? Explain why.

General Requirements:

Submit the executive summary as Word document.

APA format is not required, but solid academic writing is expected.

This assignment uses a grading rubric. Please review the rubric prior
to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations
for successful completion.