SBIR Phase I: Knowledge Modeling for Data Driven Optimization Based Strategic Promotion Design

该小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目旨在开发一种基于数据驱动的优化方法，用于零售市场建模和战略定价。零售企业面临着设计促销活动的持续不断的挑战和负担。该公司在零售市场建模和战略定价方面的基线技术已经实地证明了将大量个人购买历史记录转化为有利可图的决策的潜力。目标是扩大基线技术的覆盖范围，以解决更广泛的推广设计问题。具体的技术目标是：1)时间敏感型市场模型(推导出时间敏感型行为的市场模型。所希望的元素包括季节性、定时后续和顺序购买分析)、2)多维市场模型(导出市场行为中的多维关联的市场模型，例如客户属性、目录排列或商店差异化)，以及3)简化的促销优化(通过数据驱动的市场参数的提取，例如对联合产品优惠或多个促销优惠的预期响应，实现促销设计过程的“自动化”，以用于数学促销优化)。这些对基线公司技术的进步可以为战略推广设计的商业产品奠定基础。这个项目将对教育和职业培训产生更广泛的影响。作为其宣传活动的一部分，该公司将在麻省理工学院工业联络计划中提供一门关于“科学营销”的课程。这个项目特有的附加值在于它的高度跨学科性质，涉及科学营销、大规模优化、定价理论和数据分析。这类活动的结果不可避免地允许促进新的教育或研究倡议的概念的交叉滋养。事实上，只有在小公司中，学术界涌现的新经济理论才有机会在真正的数据驱动环境中得到评估。在职业培训方面，Infolenz将继续以股票补偿安排定期招聘暑期实习生，以获得一手创业公司经验。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to develop a data-driven optimization-based approach to retail market modeling and strategic pricing. Retail companies are faced with the persistently renewed challenge and burden of designing sales promotions. The company's baseline technologies in retail market model building and strategic pricing have field-demonstrated the potential to turn large volumes of individual purchase history records into profitable decisions. The objective is to extend the reach of the baseline technologies to address a broader variety of promotion design problems. Specific technical objectives are: 1) Time-sensitive market models (Derive a market model of time sensitive behavior. Desirable elements include seasonality, timed follow-on and sequential purchase analysis.), 2) Multidimensional market models (Derive a market model of multidimensional associations in market behaviors, such as customer attributes, catalogue alignment, or store differentiation), and 3) Streamlined promotion optimization (Enable an "automation" of the promotion design process through the data driven extraction of market parameters, such as the expected response to joint product offers or multiple promotion offers, for mathematical promotion optimization). These advances to the baseline company's technology can form the foundation of a commercial product for strategic promotion design.This project will have a broader impact on education and career training. As part of its dissemination activities the company will offer a course on "Scientific Marketing" in the MIT Industrial Liaison Program. The added value specific to this project lies in its highly interdisciplinary nature, involving scientific marketing, large-scale optimization, pricing theory, and data analysis. Results from such activities inevitably allow cross-fertilization of concepts that catalyze new educational or research initiatives. Indeed it is in small companies where new economic theories emerging from academia have an opportunity to be evaluated in a true data driven environment. Regarding career training, Infolenz will continues its regular hiring of summer interns in a stock compensated arrangement to get first hand startup company experience.