Remember that old chestnut about retailers displaying diapers next to beer after spotting a sales correlation through the use of a data warehouse? Countless speakers at countless conferences have related how young fathers, dropping into late night stores to buy some Pampers, would often pick up some beer at the same time. By moving the beer display next to the diapers, sales boomed, went the story. We’ve even related the anecdote ourselves on the odd occasion (CI No 2,842). Well the latest issue of Forbes magazine, in the course of an article that’s none too positive about the supposed benefits of data warehousing, reckons it’s finally nailed down the source of the story. It’s attributed to Thomas Blischok, who was working for NCR Corp at the time, producing a study for American Stores’ Osco Drugs back in 1992. He apparently spotted dozens of correlations, including the beer-diapers connection in purchases between 5pm and 7pm. Blischok mentioned it in a speech, and the rest was history. Though not quite, because it turns out that Osco never did rearrange its shelves to put the beer and diapers together.
