Assortment Planning Models: An Analytical and Empirical Investigation

零售商的分类计划主要包括三个要素：(a)零售商有多少不同的类别（称为零售商的广度），(b)每个类别有多少产品（称为深度），以及(c)每种产品有多少库存。分类计划的基本目标是指定一种分类，使销售或毛利率在各种约束条件下最大化，例如有限的购买产品预算，有限的展示产品的货架空间，以及各种各样的约束，例如每种产品至少有两个供应商的愿望。拟议研究计划的目标是了解零售商如何：(i)做出稳健的分类决策，（ii）跨商店本地化产品供应，（iii）对所提供的产品进行最优定价，以及（iv）在基于搜索的选择设置中做出最优产品放置决策。我们建议通过开发一个综合框架来研究分类计划决策，并结合分析和实证方法详细分析上面列出的每个问题来实现这些目标。

Assortment planning at a retailer mainly consists of three elements: (a) how many different categories does the retailer carry(called a retailer's breadth), (b) how many products do they carry in each category(called depth), and (c) how much inventory do they stock of each product. The fundamental goal of assortment planning then is to specify an assortment that maximizes sales or gross margin subject to various constraints, such as a limited budget for purchase of products, limited shelf space for displaying products, and a variety of miscellaneous constraints such as a desire to have at least two vendors for each type of product. The objective of the proposed research program is to understand how retailers can: (i) make robust assortment decisions, (ii) localize the product offering across stores, (iii) price the products offered optimally, and (iv) make optimal product placement decisions in search-based choice settings. We propose to achieve these goals by developing an integrated framework to study assortment planning decisions, and analyzing each of the issues outlined above in great detail using a combination of analytical and empirical methodologies.