Data Visualization in Tableau: Coffee Chain Analysis
In this article, we’ll walk through the analysis that has been performed for a coffee chain using the software, Tableau. If you are not aware of Tableau, it is nothing but a business intelligence tool that helps one create graphical visualizations to understand trends and patterns. Tableau is extremely user friendly and easy to learn. There are several products offered by Tableau; for this project, Tableau Desktop has been used. The software costs some fee; however, if you are a student, you can use it for free for a year. If you are not a student, you may use the 14-day trial version or purchase it.
If you prefer to take a look at the Tableau worksheet here’s the link. Let’s begin by understanding the dataset. The data file has a .mdb extension which means that it is a database file that can be opened in Microsoft Access. There are three tables in the dataset viz; FactTable, LocationTable, and the ProductTable which contain numerical and textual data.
The FactTable has 13 columns mentioned below and 4200 rows.
Profit, Margin, Sales, COGS, Total Expenses, Marketing, Inventory, Budget, Profit, Budget COGS, Budget Margin, Budget Sales, Area Code, and ProductID
COGS stands for Cost of Goods Sold
The ProductTable has four columns named Product Type, Product, ProductId, and Type. It has 13 rows, which can be broken down into further details to retrieve the information mentioned in the FactTable. Following image displays ProductTable breakdown.
Finally, the LocationTable has 156 rows and follows a similar approach to ProductTable and has four columns named Area Code, State, Market, and Market Size.
The data file can be accessed from the Tableau community website. Now, that we are familiar with the data, load it into Tableau and let’s start creating some visualizations to understand in what areas the coffee chain is lacking and what opportunities it has.
The first visualization depicts the profit per state. The image below shows the most profitable and least profitable states. California is the most profitable state for the coffee chain earning $31,785 in profits. The second most moneymaking state is Iowa, with a profit value of $22,212, and Colorado is the third most profitable state having $17,743 in profits. New Mexico, New Hampshire, and Missouri are the least valuable states for the coffee chain as they earn a profit of $799, $2,748, and $3,601 respectively.
Now, that we know our best and worst-performing states, let’s dig into it further by checking the sales performances per state.
From the image above it can be discerned that a higher number of sales do not lead to significant profits for some states. This circumstance can be mainly observed in the state of Nevada as it has a 60,159 in sales, but the profit is only $10,616, as seen in Figure 1. A similar situation can be observed in the state of New York, where it has sales of 70,852 but has a profit of $20,096 only — indicating that the sales are affecting the profit in some way.
Let’s check the performance of each product according to the states to gain a deeper understanding. Upon observing the chart below, it can be figured out that the top 3 products, according to profitability, are Columbian Coffee, Lemon Herbal Tea and Decaf Espresso. It can be observed that Green Tea is having an awful run in the Nevada market and therefore, can be considered as an underperforming product. Similarly, Mint tea and Decaf Irish Cream are a couple of more negatively performing products in the state of New York and California, respectively.
To drill deeper into this case, let’s check the inventory of the different products per state. From the inventory graph above, it can be understood that in the state of Nevada, the inventory level is exceptionally high. Also, from the previous figures, it is learned that green tea is an underperforming product. So the inventory level affects the profitability as the stock does not get sold out. Furthermore, Columbian Mocha in Massachusetts and Caffe Latte in Louisiana have negative inventory. While they may not be the most profitable states, they do earn a decent profit. Therefore, the inventory levels should be maintained accordingly to increase the profits steadily.
Now that we know the relationship between the inventory of the products and per state. Let’s take a look at the effect of marketing efforts on the stock. In the state of New York, for the product Espresso, it is seen that marketing is higher than the inventory levels. Therefore, disproportionate marketing and inventory levels can affect sales. It only makes sense to keep a well-advertised product stocked to increase sales which will eventually raise profits.
Finally, let’s create a dashboard that gives a comprehensive overview of the performance of the coffee chain. It neatly explains the profit and sales across several states. Moreover, it also informs about the profit of different products and their inventory status in the many states.
