Diagnose drop in shopper order acceptance

Q: Diagnose drop in shopper order acceptance

This question evaluates a data scientist's competence in anomaly diagnosis, causal hypothesis generation, and metric-driven investigation using marketplace event logs across shopper (supply), customer (demand), and merchant (operations) perspectives.

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Question

Marketplace Diagnosis Case: Shopper acceptance drops on Sunday afternoon

You observe that on Sunday afternoon, the number of orders that shoppers accept drops by about 2/3 compared to baseline.

Assume this is a same-day change (not a long multi-month trend), and you have access to typical Instacart marketplace logs (order creation, dispatch/offer events, acceptance, cancellations, ETAs), shopper app events, and some merchant/store signals.

Your tasks

Clarify and define the problem precisely (what metric moved?).
Generate plausible root-cause hypotheses from three perspectives:
- Shopper (supply)
- User/customer (demand)
- Merchant/store (operations)
List the top metrics and cuts you would check to narrow it down.
Propose an investigation plan and how you would validate the leading hypothesis (including what “next action” you would recommend).

Diagnose drop in shopper order acceptance

Quick Overview

Marketplace Diagnosis Case: Shopper acceptance drops on Sunday afternoon

Your tasks

Solution

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