Evaluating the Performance of Association Rules in Apriori and FP-Growth Algorithms: Market Basket Analysis to Discover Rules of Item Combinations

Abstract

This study focuses on applying data mining techniques, especially association rules mining using the Apriori and FP-GROWTH algorithms, for market basket analysis on PT. XYZ is a pharmaceutical company in Indonesia. A quantitative methodology uses a dataset of 100,498 transactions originating from 432,356 rows of data covering July to December 2022 in the JABODETABEK area. Apriori and FP-GROWTH algorithms are applied for association rules mining. The results show that FP-GROWTH has the fastest execution time of 84,655 seconds. However, the memory usage for the Apriori algorithm is the lowest at 482.32 MiB, with increments of: 0.21 MiB. For the rules generated, the two algorithms, both Apriori and FP-GROWTH, produce the same number of rules and values of support, confidence, lift, Bi-Support, Bi-Confidence, and Bi-Lift. In conclusion, Apriori is recommended for sales datasets if memory usage and ease of implementation are important. However, if the speed of execution time and a large amount of data are considered, FP-GROWTH is a better choice because the execution time is faster for large amounts of data. However, the choice of algorithm depends on the specific analysis objectives, itemset size, data scale, and computational capabilities. Results from association rules mining provide evidence of product popularity, purchasing patterns, and opportunities for strategic marketing and inventory management. These findings can help PT. XYZ improves business efficiency, understands customer behavior, and increases profitability.