Задание #1
Pricing «Push Ups»: Vinted Homework assignment for the position of Decision Scientist
Welcome to this Vinted Homework task! The goal of this assignment is to evaluate your skills required for a Decision Scientist position. Before we start, let’s discuss some ground rules for this assignment:
You have 4 hours to spend on this task - if there are any technical issues during the task, please inform your hiring manager so that we can find a suitable solution
The output should be your analyses (e.g. Python/R) and a single pdf file.
Please include in your pdf file the answers to all of the questions below, including supporting graphs or figures
Don't spend too much time on making the document pretty, we expect charts and text to be clear and interpretable by non-data stakeholders, but it does not have to be a polished document/presentation (so screenshots of graphs created in Python or R will do perfectly fine)
Please follow the time indicators shown in the task, we expect you to spend at least 50% of your time in section 2C and demonstrate analytical skills especially here
You will not be presenting the homework, so make sure we can understand your reasoning from the submission itself
You can use either Python or R for this assignment
Delivery of the results can be in any form you like (e.g. notebook for the code, and pdf slides for the answers)
We expect your solutions to be insightful, justified, clearly communicated and understandable by decision makers without a background in statistics.
You can find a detailed description of the available data on the last page of this assignment. We wish you the best of luck!
Introduction
Vinted is a second hand marketplace where sellers upload items and try to sell them to buyers. It is normal that supply is larger than demand, and not all items are being sold. However, our aim is to make sellers happy. In order to provide sellers with as many opportunities to sell as possible, they can buy specific features to promote their items. One of the available promotion features is the «push up» feature that boosts item visibility.
«Push ups» increase the attention given to a specific item on the platform by increasing the visibility for potential buyers (i.e. more views on the homepage and category page) for 3 days after having purchased the «push up» feature. As a result, the item that is up for sale will get significantly more views (on average). Currently, it costs €2 to buy the «push up» feature. Vinted is considering whether this is the best monetization strategy for the value added services.
Your task is to come up with a data-driven approach to evaluate the existing «push up» monetization strategy and give suggestions on how we could improve the monetization of the platform and its long-term effects.
Section I: Evaluate current situation (~1 hour)
The people at Vinted often introduce new features to the platform. An important step in deciding whether to continue a certain feature is to evaluate the relevant metric(s).
(A) Explain quantitatively using at least one graph how well the current «push up» feature is performing for the Vinted platform. Do you think there is room for improvement and why (not)?
(B) In the GIRLS_CLOTHING / FOR_BABIES category, the price of the push up feature is more than half of the average listing price. However, there are still sellers willing to pay for the feature. Why do you think is this the case?
Задание #2
Section II: Analyse alternative strategies (~2.5 hours)
Besides the «push up» feature in its current form, one could think of alternative ways to monetize this feature.
(A) Your colleague suggests keeping a fixed price for the «push up» feature throughout the platform. What are the pros and cons of this strategy?
(B) Can you think of an alternative way to set the pricing of «push ups»? What are the pros and cons for this strategy?
(C) Please evaluate the expected revenue of the strategy proposed in the previous question. What is the improvement over the current strategy? Are there any risks involved with this strategy?
Note: we expect analytical depth in your answer here. Please leverage the data that is available to come to a data-driven estimation of the revenue improvement.
Задание #3
Suppose you and your team decide to pursue the new pricing feature you suggested in this assignment.
Describe the next steps in testing your suggested pricing strategy in detail, up until the phase where it is fully live on the Vinted platform.
Data description
ColumnTypeDescriptioncategory_2stringHigh level category available on the platform in which users can list an itemcategory_3stringLow level category available on the platform in which users can list an itemnumber_of_listingsintegerThe number of listed items per category avg_listing_price_eurnumericThe average price listers ask for their listed items (EUR)revenue_from_push_upsnumericRevenue made by Vinted from the «push up» feature price