Globus uses agents to simulate customer behaviour

Lebensmittelzeitung 09, March 3, 2006, page 32, by Björn Weber

St Wendel company first to optimise pricing and sales promotion planning with Dacos' new artificial intelligence.

Globus wants to improve results by using agent technology for pricing and sales promotion planning. as well as clearing product lines. The St Wendel-based company will be the first to use newly-founded Dacos' Retail Simulation Engine. It will also be conducting CRM analytics in the medium term.

St Wendel-based self-service department store operator Globus has chosen to be the first company to put Dacos Software GmbH's newly-developed Retail Simulation Engine into practice. A team headed by Professor Joachim Hertel has spent the last two years taking advancements from the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence and making them practical for dealing with issues in the retail trade. dm Drogeriemarkt, Globus and Tegut made genuine data from their data warehouses available to developers for the project.

The primary intention is to be able to forecast sales levels following a price change or improvement to a special offer - not only for the product concerned, but for every other item in the product range. By using so-called 'behaviour networks', the Engine can forecast the consequences much better than standard stochastic theory, claims Dacos joint founder Christian Russ.