Abstract

While industries in the Philippines have long initialized readiness and adoption of big data, recent challenges introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic have pushed companies into this transformation at breakneck speed. Among the sectors where big data has been mined for business value is the retail industry, largely through the boom in eCommerce usage among the public. This paper presents a case study of consulting work provided for a major retail business in the Philippines, and the value and insights gained from bespoke models trained on high dimensional data collected by the company. Included in these models are topic models for understanding factors driving success in marketing campaigns, and nonparametric smoothing methods for eCommerce traffic prediction and data-driven pricing strategies. While these models have yet to be operationalized for integration in the company’s business-as-usual functions, limited case studies have already resulted in a promising long-term big data plan. The researchers hope to present with this paper an up-to-date and comprehensive introduction to how big data has been transforming the Philippine retail sector, and act as reference for academics, entrepreneurs, and business managers both within and outside the Philippines.