Rockbuster Digital Transition
This project was initially met with some apprehension on my part, particularly concerning my recent foray into SQL. The prospect of handling joins and subqueries seemed daunting. However, as with many challenges, I quickly realized my concerns were unfounded. This endeavor served as a powerful demonstration of SQL's capabilities in navigating the increasingly complex realm of data.
The goal was to uncover insights into Rockbuster's top movies, customer rental habits, and customer price elasticity. I seamlessly integrated my SQL skills into the project, mapping relational databases, and orchestrating data wrangling and summarization.
In total, this project took approximately 20 hours, ultimately showcasing the power of SQL in deciphering complex datasets and deriving actionable insights to inform Rockbuster's transition to a digital platform.
Top 10 Countries Revenue Map for 2017 Rentals
The Steps I Took:
Determined project goals based on brief
Extracted entity relationship diagram (ERD)
Created a data dictionary for documentation
Cleaned data with SQL using the ETL process
Performed exploratory queries
Stored data as a CTE for future queries
Used Tableau to visualize findings
Presented as a PowerPoint
Tools I Used:
PostgresSQL
Excel
Tableau
PowerPoint
Why I took these step:
Transformed stakeholder needs into achievable actions to ensure success
Gained insights into how the database was set up
Defined all variables and connections for future team work
Ensured correct analysis the first time
Obtained a feel for the data
Made calling certain variables easier without having to re-query each time.
Used to convey findings in a concise manner
Clarified recommendations to stakeholders
Challenges:
A challenge I was not expecting was how difficult it was going to be to create insightful visuals for this project. Since many of the project goals was to find exact numbers a lot of the data did not need to be visualized with charts.
While this sounds ok, data in charts is much easier to digest than lines of text.
Which is why as data analysts we always try to put it in a dashboard. However, I was able to make some insightful charts as you’ll see below. Just less than some of my other projects.
Some Queries
Here are some of my wonderful visuals from this project.
Simplified Schema made in DbVisualizer
2017
Full Gallery
Click to Enlarge
Recomendations:
Despite all of Rockbuster’s movies being in English they have a large global customer base. Before switching their top movies to digital versions they should create test markets to determine if their current success is due to hard copy film rentals from English speaking nomads.
Rockbuster should also focus on increasing their hold in foreign markets where there is less competition to other online movie rentals. Perhaps increasing their film language offerings would be beneficial. This will also require a study.
Retrospective:
Working with the database in this project was a lot of fun. The data pipelines were interesting to look at, though whenever I exported the full schema it would turn out grainy – hence why the one on here is smaller. I wonder if another version or buying the pro would allow for better image quality on export.
Because of this project, I’ve also realized the importance of documentation and organization. I had a lot of moving parts (files) between software’s. My file folder for this project is currently a long string csv’s and excel files. Future projects will be better organized.
Honestly, I know a lot of people don’t like SQL but ever since I completed SQL Island (a German educational game found for free online) I’ve had a soft spot for it. Now I enjoy the process of querying. Going forward, I plan to try out other SQL versions such as Microsoft.