Hello, this is the first project that I did in the Intro to Data Analytics Course. I used a data set from GameCo. It’s a video game company. The goal is to provide the data-driven insights for the marketing budget plan in 2017. The whole process used only Microsoft Excel. e.g. filtering, cleaning data, dealing with missing values, calculating, pivoting, plotting visualization and doing statistical analysis. In the end, I wrote the project reflection, created visualizations, shared the insights and gave recommendations to stakeholders.
Preparing and Analysis Data Process:
– Understanding Data Set
– Cleaning Data
– Grouping and Summarizing Data
– Conducting a Descriptive Analysis
– Visualizing Data Insights
– Storytelling with Data
Project Overview
- Goal: Provide the data-driven insights for the marketing budget plan in 2017
- Finding: Using line charts to find the significant changes between North America Sales, Europe Sales and Japan Sales by years.
Data Set
- It’s a data set that contains information about Rockbuster’s film inventory, customers, and payments, among other things.
Data Quality
- Column Year has 271 missing values (was removed), column Publisher has 58 missing values(was removed). Replaced blank values by using mean imputation value in these columns: NA_sales (2 blanks), EU_sales (8 blanks), JP_sales (8 blanks), Other_sales (576 blanks) and Global_sales (8 blanks). Removed 1 duplicate value and removed 1 zer0 number
Data Limitations
- Do not know how the website collected the data so maybe the source could include bias or errors
3 key questions before start
- What Type of Data am i working with? Time-series (Date), Geospatial (Region) and Categorical (Genres, Platforms, Publishers)
- What do i want to communicate? Comparison (Column Chart, Bar Chart, Line Chart) , Composition (Bar Chart, Stacked Bar, Line Chart)
- Who is the end user and what do they need? Stakeholders (Simple charts, Minimal Details). Provide the data-driven insights for the marketing budget plan in 2017
- Total Sales in each region from 1980 – 2016 (Global, North America, Europe, Japan and Other) so we will know which region has likely to need more marketing budget plan in 2017.
- Proportion of Sales in each region by Genres in 2016 for comparison and prediction
- Proportion of Sales in each region by Platforms in 2016 for comparison and prediction
- Proportion of Sales in each region by Publishers in 2016 for comparison and prediction
- Use pre-attentive attribute like color, size, and position to highlight key data points or specific patterns
- Use Gestalt principles like proximity, enclosure and connection to group related visual elements
- Consider common reading pattern (like Z or F patterns) when designing dashboard layout
- Context gives numbers meaning, and helps interpret them accurately so i used annotate points to show the meanings in my visualizations as well as the labels.
Conclusions:
- Shooter games is the highest sales in genres for North America both overall and in the past year. PS4 is the highest sales in North America in 2016. Ubisoft and Sony Computer Entertainment are high respectively in North America in 2016.
- Shooter game is the highest sales in genres for Europe over year however Action game also made the highest sales in genre when it represents the proportion of global sales over years. PS4 has the highest sales for Europe in 2016. Electronic Art has the highest sales in publisher for Europe in 2016.
- Role-Playing game is the highest proportion for Japan sales over years however Action game has been in the top spot in 2016. 3DS has the highest sales and higher than PS4 for Japan in 2016. Nintendo is highest sales for Japan in 2016
Recommendataions:
For North America
• The cause of North America sales dropped will need to dig a little deeper to understand the real problem and act accordingly
• More focus on Shooter game in genres, PS4 in platform and Ubisoft in Publisher. They made on high selling.
• Can maintain the same marketing budget.
For Europe
• EU sales has shown the upward trend in proportion to global sales over the years.
• More focus on Action game and Shooter game in genre, PS4 in platform and Electronic Art in Publisher. They made on high selling.
• A larger portion of the marketing budget could be applied to EU sales.
For Japan
• Since JP sales dropped in 1996 to 2016. it will need to do more reserch.
• More focus on Role Playing game and Action game in genre, 3DS in platform and Nintendo in Publisher. They made on high selling.
• A small portion of the marketing budget could be applied to JP sales.
Please click this link to see my project reflection
