March 11, 2004
Weathernews Delivers Weather Information to 7-Eleven Taiwan
-- Using weather information and POS data to assist demand forecasts and ordering systems --
Weathernews Inc., the world's largest full-service weather company, has begun providing weather information for the purpose of weather marketing to the top convenience store chain 7-ELEVEN Taiwan, operated by the leading Taiwanese food business group President Chain Store Corp. (head office: Taipei). The service has first been introduced in the Taipei area, and will cover all of the approximately 3,300 stores in Taiwan by year's end.
The service will be linked to a second-generation point-of-sale (POS) system being installed by 7-ELEVEN Taiwan. Initially, weather data for the twenty-two regions in Taiwan will be updated every six hours and transmitted to stores. Regular weather forecasts, as well as information on UV rays, the day's "beer index," and other lifestyle-oriented weather information, will be made available directly to store visitors via monitors affixed to store registers.
7-ELEVEN Taiwan and Weathernews plan to verify and analyze the correlation between the weather data transmitted by Weathernews and POS sales data for merchandises in order to create a database of demand trends. For example, one trend might reveal that "beer sells well when the temperature rises three degrees above 17 degrees." In the future, 7-ELEVEN Taiwan has plans to operate a merchandise ordering system for each convenience store outlet that minimizes out-of-stock goods and waste, in addition to forecasting demand in response to changes in precipitation or temperature.
The weather marketing related business at Weathernews began in 1993 when it provided Seven-Eleven Japan with information for weather marketing, the first such undertaking in Japan. Expanding to include 7-ELEVEN Taiwan involved applying the knowledge acquired in Japan to build a system that reflected Taiwan's unique demand trends and consumer preferences. Weather marketing has attracted a growing interest, especially among the distribution and retail sectors, and it is expected to become increasingly popular as the reliability of data improves through the process of forming hypotheses and verifying them. In addition to expanding the distribution and retail industry weather services it currently offers for leading distribution and retail companies in Japan, Weathernews will extend the services it provides in Asia, including Taiwan where the company has begun providing service.
