Exploration of big data and machine learning in retail

Abstract: During the last couple of years, there has been an immense increase in data generation. This new data era has been referred to as the big data paradigm. More and more business areas are today realizing the power of capturing more data, and by this hope to reveal hidden patterns and gain new insights of their business. ICA is one of the largest retail business in Sweden, and saw the potential of utilizing the big data technologies to take the next step in digitalisation. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the role of these techniques in combination with machine learning algorithms and highlights advantages and possible limitations. Two use cases were implemented and tested which reveals possible application areas and important aspects to consider.