Prescriptive price optimization using optimal regression trees

This paper focuses on prescriptive price optimization, which derives the optimal pricing strategy that maximizes future revenue or profit by using demand forecasting models for multiple products. Prescriptive price optimization requires accurate demand forecasting models because the accuracy of these models has a direct impact on pricing strategies aimed at increasing revenue or profit. However, … Read more

The impact of passive social media viewers in influence maximization

A frequently studied problem in the context of digital marketing for online social networks is the influence maximization problem that seeks for an initial seed set of influencers to trigger an information propagation cascade (in terms of active message forwarders) of expected maximum impact. Previously studied problems typically neglect that the probability that individuals passively … Read more

The Value of Robust Assortment Optimization Under Ranking-based Choice Models

We study a class of robust assortment optimization problems that was proposed by Farias, Jagabathula, and Shah (2013). The goal in these problems is to find an assortment that maximizes a firm’s worst-case expected revenue under all ranking-based choice models that are consistent with the historical sales data generated by the firm’s past assortments. We … Read more

Exact Logit-Based Product Design

The share-of-choice product design (SOCPD) problem is to find the product, as defined by its attributes, that maximizes market share arising from a collection of customer types or segments. When customers follow a logit model of choice, the market share is given by a weighted sum of logistic probabilities, leading to the logit-based share-of-choice product … Read more

Assortment Optimization under the Decision Forest Model

We study the problem of finding the optimal assortment that maximizes expected revenue under the decision forest model, a recently proposed nonparametric choice model that is capable of representing any discrete choice model and in particular, can be used to represent non-rational customer behavior. This problem is of practical importance because it allows a firm … Read more

Marketing Mix Optimization with Practical Constraints

In this paper, we address a variant of the marketing mix optimization (MMO) problem which is commonly encountered in many industries, e.g., retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries. This problem requires the spend for each marketing activity, if adjusted, be changed by a non-negligible degree (minimum change) and also the total number of activities … Read more

RaBVIt-SG, an algorithm for solving Feedback Nash equilibria in Multiplayers Stochastic Differential Games

In a previous work, we have introduced an algorithm, called RaBVItG, used for computing Feedback Nash equilibria of deterministic multiplayers Differential Games. This algorithm is based on a sequence of Game Iterations (i.e., a numerical method to simulate an equilibrium of a Differential Game), combined with Value Iterations (i.e, a numerical method to solve a … Read more

Partially-Ranked Choice Models for Data-Driven Assortment Optimization

The assortment of products carried by a store has a crucial impact on its success. However, finding the right mix of products to attract a large portion of the customers is a challenging task. Several mathematical models have been proposed to optimize assortments. In particular, rank-based choice models have been acknowledged for representing well high-dimensional … Read more

Dynamic Data-Driven Estimation of Non-Parametric Choice Models

We study non-parametric estimation of choice models, which was introduced to alleviate unreasonable assumptions in traditional parametric models, and are prevalent in several application areas. Existing literature focuses only on the static observational setting where all of the observations are given upfront, and lacks algorithms that provide explicit convergence rate guarantees or an a priori … Read more

A Data Driven Functionally Robust Approach for Coordinating Pricing and Order Quantity Decisions with Unknown Demand Function

We consider a retailer’s problem of optimal pricing and inventory stocking decisions for a product. We assume that the price-demand curve is unknown, but data is available that loosely specifies the price-demand relationship. We propose a conceptually new framework that simultaneously considers pricing and inventory decisions without a priori fitting a function to the price-demand … Read more