The Data

The available information set is

1. Weekly UPS scanner data (sales, prices, profits).

2. Promotional Data from IRI (features)

3. Demographics and Competitive Characteristics.

First, is that you've got this UPC standard data at the weekly level. So you've go information about sales, and prices and profits. Then you've got promotional data, and that essentially says what products are advertised this week. And then finally, you've got demographic and competitive characteristics. So we know this store has x percentage of people that have a college education. Or maybe we know that the competitor is located directly next door to mine. So in that case you'd expect, ``well, look, my stores are right next to my competitor, then people should do a lot of comparison shopping and are going to be really sensitive to price changes.''

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