Soldout Items

I know, you've got a container of stuff that somebody charged you $10,000 to ship over here and then extorted you for another $6,000 and now that container is sitting off of Long Beach. Those widgets you've put in print for the October catalog are not going to be available, are they?

What happens when a customer buys something and you have to tell the customer the item is not available? Does this unfortunate incident impact future rebuy rates?

Yes. Yes it does.

Assume your customer has a 35% chance of buying again next year.

• If the customer ordered 1 item and it was backordered, it's likely the rebuy rate will stay near 35%.
• If the customer ordered 1 item and the item was ultimately canceled, the customer frequently has the desire to order a comparable item, driving up the rebuy rate (yes, this happens often).
• If the customer ordered 3 items and all three items were nuked in some way, the customer is ticked off and the rebuy rates goes down ... often considerably.

Work with your analyst to solve this riddle.

And if your analyst is overwhelmed with a lot of requests, email me (kevinh@minethatdata.com) and we'll get busy.