E x e c u t i v e S u m m a r y : H a n e s A n a l y t i c s

C h a l l e n g e

B y : A l e x a n d r a B a t e r , C a r o l i n e P e r r y a n d M a r g o P i e r s o n

Abstract:
Hanesbrands provided an analytical challenge to uncover unstructured data, analyze the development
of strategic business unit transactions and discover their direct correlation to review sentiment,
followed by further recommendations to increase future digital sales growth for its Champion brand.
Certain products sustained steady sales throughout the fiscal year, while other products showed a strong
seasonality with some seemingly random peaks. After completing a detailed analysis through various
different methodologies, we recommend a gender targeted marketing campaign and a new customer
review model.
Objective:
The main objectives that were targeted throughout this analysis were to connect common sentiment
across different consumers, review unstructured data and discover whether an online review can be
quantified.

Methodology:
The process began by separately analyzing the transactions and review data with Tableau and IBM
Bluemix respectively. Through Tableau, it was possible to view the various trends for monetary and
unit sales. After filtering the data by the different given variables, it was found that the most interesting
and comparable segments were Strategic Business Unit, gender, and census designated geographical
region. With this information, we began to clean the data by identifying and omitting the segments that
had too few data points to analyze with a high level of confidence. While each geographical region had
significant data points, it was discovered that Strategic Business Units one, four, seven, and 10, and
Genders three through seven were not relevant for further research.
The next step taken was to clean the transaction data by filtering out the irrelevant data and identify
which data points by month required additional investigation. For example, November of 2016 had a
100% jump in sales from 2015 in G1, which was an immediate indication that further exploration was
essential (see slide 11).
Second, to analyze the review data, we needed to clean our irrelevant data and spelling errors in the
review text to ensure more accurate sentiment analysis. The years which accounted for less than 10% of
the total amount of reviews were filtered out. Therefore, through cleaning that data, the years that were
considered crucial to the overall sentiment analysis were 2014 – 2017. Next, analysis was conducted on
those years, month by month. The analysis focused on the percentage of four and five star reviews by
SBU by gender, versus those same one to three star reviews.
IBM Bluemix was then consulted to gain a better understand of overall customer sentiment. In order to
clean the data and improve the confidence of the predictive model, spell check review was conducted on
each cell of review text. Next, a random sampling of 1,000 customer reviews and ratings was entered
into Bluemix to serve as the training data for future sentiment analysis on the data set as a whole.
After IBM learned the natural language, we chose various keywords to analyze and IBM was able to
return the most likely rating of reviews containing those keywords with various confidence levels.
After research on both sets of data was conducted, the findings were compared using the graphs
previously created in Tableau and Microsoft pivot tables. Initially, we ran a simple regression on sales
data by SBU by month versus average rating by SBU by month, however other variables were too
significant and the regression did not produce a significant correlation.
Next, we chose extreme spikes in the data to compare with potential changes in customer reviews. For
example, the customer sentiment of the ratings before and after the spike in November of 2016 were
further analyzed in anticipation of data significance. We compared the percentage of reviews before the
spike that used male pronouns, suggesting the products were a gift for a male loved one, versus reviews
after the spike, or after those people would have received what we assumed to be gifts.

Findings:
The findings for this challenge are best described in two different sectors, transaction data and
customer review, which were found to have a direct correlation between one another.

Transaction Data:
Within the data, it was important to begin by focusing on the transaction data to extract individual
trends. After separating the monetary and unit sales by region, we found that the Northeast held the
highest sales of all census designated regions despite encompassing the least amount of states. Then, the
data was standardized by census population designated regions and found that the Northeast makes up
41% of total sales of Champion brand for the continental United States, a very high percentage of sales
for just one out of the four total regions.
After region analysis, the data focus shifted to the different Strategic Businesses Units. SBU 3 is
overwhelmingly the largest seller with clear seasonal patterns. One of the most significant findings was
that within SBU 3, in November of 2016, there was a 100% increase from November 2015. After further
examination of this spike, it became noticeable that the majority of this jump was from the G1 gender
category, which is associated with male products.
Additionally, this jump was caused by an increase in sales in Product Category One (see slide 28). The
graph showed that male products jumped during the holiday season, however, G2 category, generally
associated with female products, had consistent sales throughout the year. From this, it was possible to
make an assumption that male products are bought as gifts during the holiday season, while women’s
products are purchased more consistently during all times of the year. SBUs 5 and 8 followed SBU 3 in
sales, but neither showed a significant uptick in sales in November of 2016. (see slide 29)
Customer Sentiment Data:
Then, the focus shifted to IBM Bluemix to analyze the customer sentiment from the review data. The
Natural Language Classifier tool on IBM was able to give us confidence levels of rating numbers based
on words or phrases that are considered important in the ecommerce retail industry. Two of the
analyzed terms were “shipping”, which returned a rating of 5 stars with 95.7% confidence, and “fit”,
which returned a rating of 5 stars with 95.1% confidence. We also found that the keywords “size” and
“price” did not have a strong correlation to any rating. Although this seemed to be useless information,
it is actually equally as important to strengthening the Champion brand. This creates an area of
improvement; consumers should associate both size and price with a 5 star review in order to attract
other customers to make a purchase.
In addition to IBM Bluemix, Pivot Tables in Excel were created to have a better understanding of
numerical rating based on the segments that were identified in the transaction data. There was focus on
SBUs 3,5, and 8 as those had the highest sales.
For SBU 3, month over month, since 2014, 80% or more of reviews were 4 or 5 stars for every gender
category of product. SBU 5 had a similar trend; month over month since 2014, 90% or more of reviews
were 4 or 5 stars for both product genders involved. However, SBU 8 is trending negatively, despite
having over 85% of reviews month over month since 2014 be 4 or 5 stars. On the whole, Champion is a
positively reviewed brand with 77.64% of total reviews from 2007 rating 4 or 5 stars.

Recommendations:
After analyzing many data sets, which ranged from qualitative and quantitative samples, it was possible
to develop strong and feasible recommendations for the Champion brand.
First, gender targeted marketing campaigns during the pre-holiday season would drive e-commerce
sales in both men and women’s products. One large holiday campaign would focus around a family-
oriented advertising strategy that promoted men’s Champion products as gifts, due to the overwhelming
data supporting the idea that women buy Champion products as gifts for their male loved ones. To
increase a spike in women’s products sales, a search engine marketing campaign would simultaneously
run, suggesting different women’s products through the Champion website, to encourage women to buy
themselves products, while they shop for their male counterparts.
Secondly, improvement in the current Champion review model is highly suggested to aid Champion
executives in better understanding the sentiments of the consumer. Through analysis of the review
data, the keywords “fit”, “shipping” and “price value”, appeared frequently across customer reviews.
Therefore, numerous scales regarding satisfaction with shipping, sizing, and pricing throughout the
review model would increase the amount of details received in feedback. This would provide greater
information about key concerns. To incentivize customer reviews, it is suggested for Champion to run
sweepstake campaigns that allow opportunity for loyal consumers to get something back in return for
their valued opinion.