Data Study Group Final Report: Sainsbury's

Data Study Groups are week-long events at The Alan Turing Institute bringing together some of the country’s top talent from data science, artificial intelligence, and wider fields, to analyse real-world data science challenges.

Investigating the impact of the UK’s Soft Drinks Industry Levy on consumers’ purchases of soft drinks

Evidence from consumer panel data has already shown that the UK Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) has been effective at the population level in reducing the volume of soft drinks purchased, and the amount of sugar they contribute to the diet. However, less is understood about how the levy impacted individual customers.

Using customer-level transaction data from Sainsbury’s, the challenge was to explore how different types of customers responded to the levy. This work contributes to our understanding of whether fiscal policy is an effective and equitable approach to dietary improvement. Thus, the approaches and findings in this report are expected to be of interest to policy-makers. Understanding customer behaviours will also help Sainsbury’s to better understand their customers’ propensity to change in response to different market interventions. This will enable Sainsbury’s to tailor their offering, ensuring nobody is left behind in the goal to provide healthy sustainable diets for all.

This report describes the analysis undertaken during a 2-week online Data Study Group (DSG) in partnership with The Alan Turing Institute and the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics. A team of 9 data scientists participated in the DSG. Biographies for each participant, and the challenge leaders can be found in section 14 at the end of this report.