How can i start with data mining for small grocery shop

Question

My company got the project to build simple website of grocery shop with catalogue only without shop cart. Few days ago i read something about data mining from here

I found that it is possible to do some predictive modelling like

For example, one Midwest grocery chain used the data mining capacity of Oracle software to analyze local buying patterns. They discovered that when men bought diapers on Thursdays and Saturdays, they also tended to buy beer.

I told them this example and they were happy if i can do something like that.

Now don't know how to start and where to start. I know mysql databse and can program complex qureries as well. But i don't know how i can get the type of data like beer and diapers

I have 3-4 months left. Can anyone guide me how i can start. I also don't know what type of data of customer shopping i can get from the shop may be excel files .

But i want to start

Answer 1

Judging your question, you don't seem to know much, if anything, about data mining. That being said, you can get something usable running in 4 months, especially in a very restricted domain like a web shop, where all you are after is probably buying patterns for a start.

Please understand that you cannot expct some out-of-the-box solution that can be posted here in 10 lines of code, so I suggest you start by reading a decent book on the subject. I'd recommend: Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications