SAS data mining competition for students kicks off in Korea
SAS Korea kicked off its sixth SAS Data Mining Championship in July to a standing-room-only crowd. This annual competition offers university students the opportunity to learn and apply their data mining skills in a competitive format. The competition is advertised in universities all across Korea, inviting students to demonstrate their knowledge and use of SAS Enterprise Miner™.
Lotte Department Store, Korea’s largest department store chain, is a special addition to the 2008 competition and will be providing customer data sets for use in the competition. Lotte’s participation stems in part from their interest in gaining ideas for innovative marketing strategies. News of this partnership helped attract record numbers of students, with more than 150 team entries, a 50 percent increase over 2007 and five times the number of entries from when the competition began only six years ago.
The SAS Data Mining Championship began May 26 and will run until Nov. 12. More than 95 teams and 150 students (representing bachelors, masters and PhD-level students) attended the July 9 kickoff. Their participation and enthusiasm overwhelmed the SAS Korea Education Room in which it was held.
How it works
Students form teams of three to compete. During the first phase, teams use the Lotte customer data to create models and demonstrate effective customer scoring techniques aimed at achieving two goals. The first goal is to identify new customers and propose the best marketing strategies to grow revenue from this group. The second goal is aimed at the growing “Gold Miss” customer segment. “Gold Miss” is a term in Korea’s retail market applied to single, independent, middle- to high-income women who are typically very career-oriented. Teams are charged with identifying members of this segment and proposing strategies to target them with the right product mix. This will be a challenge, as a recent article in The Economist explains, “Women in South Korea have a reputation for being some of the world’s most demanding shoppers.”
Cash awards -- and other benefits
Teams up to this challenge will present their reports during phase two of the competition. One team will be awarded first place, two teams will receive second place, and three teams will receive third place. All six winning teams will receive cash awards to share among members and each student winner will receive credit that can be used for SAS Training. Lotte will also select a few teams they believe proposed the most innovative marketing strategies and ideas. Winners will also receive the opportunity to interview for positions with SAS Korea -- two former winners have already been hired. In addition, this competition generates media attention and each participant is recognized by their university for competing.
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