CoverStory—Automated News Finding in Marketing

Information Resources developed an expert analysis tool, CoverStory, to uncover the important facts and trends in the data base of Ocean Spray Cranberries, a $1 billion fruit-processing company that tracks sales and assesses the effectiveness of its marketing programs with large data bases collected through bar-code scanners in supermarkets.

Abstract

Ocean Spray Cranberries, a $1 billion fruit-processing cooperative, tracks sales and assesses the effectiveness of its marketing programs with large data bases collected through bar-code scanners in supermarkets. Their level of detail is so great that it can obscure important facts and trends. Ocean Spray needed to automate as much of the analysis as possible. Working with Ocean Spray, Information Resources developed an expert system, CoverStory, to uncover the important facts and trends in the data base. Using a series of subanalyses, CoverStory reveals brands and markets that are newsworthy and identifies marketing factors that may be causing changes in these brands and markets. CoverStory is part of an overall DSS at Ocean Spray that permits a single marketing professional to manage the process of alerting all the marketing and sales managers to key problems and opportunities and to provide them with daily problem-solving information.