Prof. dr. Bas Donkers Professor in Marketing Research at the Erasmus School of Economics, has been appointed Chief of Science at SphereMall. As a professor of Marketing Research, it’s his main ambition to develop techniques that help better understand consumers. With techniques ranging from very simple metrics to large scale econometric or machine learning models, the ever-increasing amount of data delivers more and more detailed insights into consumer needs and wishes. As Chief of Science at SphereMall, Donkers can apply these insights at high level, resulting in win-win e-commerce situations.
Personalization of shopping experiences is an example of such a win-win situation. Instead of an endless search for the right product, based on the need, context and preference, a world around the consumer is created in which products are quickly found. Thanks to SphereMall, B2B and B2C companies are more and better able to easily access products that match their customers' preferences. As Chief of Science at SphereMall, Donkers is working with the Data Science team, a highly talented and ambitious team ready for the 22nd century. With them, he makes the technology so that the product SphereMall can deliver true personalization.
Their own Chief of Science is not unknown to Christian van Someren, CEO and founder of SphereMall. "Long before SphereMall even was created, Bas was our Chief of Science.", says van Someren. Van Someren got acquainted with Donkers during his own study quantitative marketing at Erasmus University Rotterdam. "We talked about this matter 12 years ago. Pretty much of what I have learned about this, I owe to Bas. We often conducted fundamental discussions about the field of personalization, consumer profiling and what the chances are. Bas brings like no other insight and new thinking. That makes us understand each other very well and flawlessly understand when it comes to terms of technology, models, and personalization. We specifically made the strategic choice not to appoint senior data scientists. What we build at SphereMall is a complete proprietary domain that will be the new standard for applying intelligence in personalization. That's what we call personalized commerce. We educate the right people with the right knowledge ourselves. That’s where Bas is in the lead.".
The data science team of SphereMall integrates ideas and experiences from econometrics, machine learning, data management and programming. Together with, among others, Monique de Haard, Sergey Kondratovec, Alexey Shupikov, SphereMall builds the realization of Personalization. SphereMall's intelligent software shows products that the individual consumer wants, not what others have bought. The products thus come to the consumer as it were. That's what SphereMall considers as the definition of personalized commerce.
SphereMall is a Dutch technology company founded in 2014 by Christian van Someren and three employees of his previous company, Truus.nl. SphereMall makes software for the most personalized (online) shopping experience. "We call this personalized commerce. Our self-developed intelligence and technology really enables personalization of retail stores, focusing on consumers, thus making shopping as personal, easy and efficient as possible for consumers worldwide.", explains Christian van Someren. In December 2016, SphereMall raised investment funding from VOC Capital Partners. In March 2017, SphereMall signed up her first customer in the United States. SphereMall currently consists of more than 30 people across locations in the Netherlands, Ukraine and the United States. Other SphereMall customers are for example Ahrend, Kramp and Jumbo Supermarkten.