Basket missions
Basket missions describe the kind of trip each transaction represents, alongside the time of day, the categories of products bought, and the share of private-label items in the basket. They let you group baskets by shopper intent — not just by spend or product mix — so that marketing and reporting can speak to the situations customers are actually shopping for.
Basket-mission attributes are added automatically to each transaction. The feature is switched on for your business by Spaaza.
Mission type
Every basket is classified into one of three mission types:
- Refill — a focused trip dominated by a single product category. The customer came specifically for one type of thing: a quick stop for cigarettes, a top-up of pet food, a wine run.
- Stock-up — a larger, planned shop spread across several categories. Identified by total spend exceeding a threshold set for your business.
- Routine top-up — everything else: smaller, mixed baskets that don't fall into refill or stock-up. The everyday shop.
Baskets are matched against these rules in order, so a refill is always identified first — even if it happens to be high-spend.
When a basket is a refill, the dominant product category is also recorded as its refill sub-type. This makes it possible to distinguish a smoking refill from a liquor refill, a petcare refill from a snacking refill. Refill sub-types use Spaaza's universal product taxonomy described below.
Universal product categories
Spaaza maps your business's native product taxonomy into a shared set of twelve universal categories, so that baskets, customers, and reports can be compared meaningfully across businesses and regions.
| Category | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Edible groceries | Shelf-stable food, ambient goods, soft drinks |
| Perishables | Fresh produce, dairy, meat, bakery, frozen food (excluding ready-to-eat) |
| Food to go | Ready-to-eat meals, deli, hot food counters, in-store bakery |
| Snacking | Confectionery, crisps, biscuits and similar impulse items |
| Liquor | Alcoholic beverages |
| Smoking | Cigarettes, tobacco, e-cigarettes |
| Health, beauty and baby | Toiletries, medicines, baby care |
| Petcare | Pet food and supplies |
| Non-edible groceries | Household cleaning, laundry, paper products |
| General merchandise | Toys, stationery, electronics, household items |
| Media | Newspapers, magazines |
| Value added services | Lotteries, in-store services |
Each basket carries a category mix: the share of items, by quantity, in each universal category. Categories from your business's native taxonomy that are not covered by the universal mapping are reported separately under your own category codes, so no information is lost. If a category that matters to your business is not already present, it can be added — contact Spaaza to extend the mapping.
Private-label share
Each basket also reports the share of items that match your business's own-brand product patterns:
- A precise percentage of own-brand items in the basket.
- A bucket label for ease of segmentation: No PL, Low PL, Mid PL, or High PL. No PL covers baskets with no own-brand items; Low PL is below 25%; Mid PL is 25% up to 50%; High PL is 50% and above.
This makes it straightforward to segment by own-brand engagement — identifying customers who consistently shop your own brand, or stores where own-brand uptake is weak.
Time-of-day attributes
Each basket carries the time it was completed, expressed in your business's local timezone:
- Daypart: morning, lunch, afternoon, evening, or night.
- Day of week and a weekend flag.
These are useful descriptors for grouping baskets by occasion — a "weekday lunch refill" reads more usefully in a report than a raw timestamp.
Where to find this in Console
Basket-mission attributes are stored on each transaction, so they appear anywhere transaction data is surfaced in Spaaza Console:
- In the Transactions area, where you can group and filter baskets by mission, category mix, daypart, and own-brand share.
- As criteria when building Customer segments, so you can target customers by the kinds of trips they make.
- In transaction exports, for analysis in your own tools.
- Through Spaaza's API, for systems that consume transaction data directly.
Enabling basket missions
The feature is off by default and is switched on for your business by Spaaza. To enable it — including your mapping of native categories to universal categories and your own private-label patterns — contact Spaaza.