Assortment Planning Models: An Analytical and Empirical Investigation

零售商的产品组合规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）他们在每个类别中有多少产品（称为深度），以及（c）他们对每个产品有多少库存。因此，分类规划的基本目标是指定一种分类，使销售额或毛利率最大化，但受到各种约束，例如购买产品的有限预算，展示产品的有限货架空间，以及各种杂项约束，例如希望每种产品至少有两个供应商。建议的研究计划的目的是了解零售商如何：（一）作出强大的分类决策，（二）本地化的产品提供跨商店，（三）价格的产品提供最佳的，（四）在基于搜索的选择设置最佳的产品放置决策。我们建议通过开发一个综合框架来研究分类规划决策，并结合分析和实证方法详细分析上述每个问题，从而实现这些目标。

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.