Title: Beyond Line Charts: Graphing market trends with R Author: Aaron Ping - Procter & Gamble, Japan K.K. Abstract: Shampoos and Conditioners are a highly competitive market in Japan. Five major corporations: Procter & Gamble, Shiseido, Unilever, Kao, and Kanebo compete for the attention of Japanese consumers. ACNeilsen tracks market share for the more than 10,000 SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) of Hair-Care products sold through retail channels. In addition, ACNeilsen provides retail measures such as pricing, display-share, and distribution-share. Keeping abreast of changes to their own Hair-Care brands and competing ones is a core task of brand managers. Line charts and indexes are the most commonly used methods for understanding brand growth and decline. Although many R charts were originally designed for other analysis purposes, they can be adapted to highlight market trends. Tressel plots and mosaic plots can show trends without the clutter of many lines in one chart. Double-histograms can highlight 'before' vs. 'after' when the market has undergone a major change. Vector plots can show more than one dimension of change at a time. Using such charts, brand managers can make decisions from a broader visual understanding of their markets than line-based trend charts can provide. Fig. 1: Market Overview Snapshot using a Mosaic plot. Each bar represents a major brand with each of the four partitions representing one of the major package forms: Bottles with a lid, Pump-style bottles, disposable Refill packages, and after-conditioner Treatments. The width of each bar is proportional to the market share held by the brand and the size of each partition is proportional to the percentage of brand share coming from each package-type. Color reflects the share growth of each brand based on a 3-month rolling index.