Real-Time Optimization of Personalized Assortments

Management Science, 60(6):1532-1551, 2014

49 Pages Posted: 20 Sep 2012 Last revised: 28 Sep 2021

See all articles by Negin Golrezaei

Negin Golrezaei

University of Southern California - Marshall School of Business

Hamid Nazerzadeh

University of Southern California - Marshall School of Business

Paat Rusmevichientong

University of Southern California - Marshall School of Business

Date Written: February 1, 2014

Abstract

Motivated by the availability of real-time data on customer characteristics, we consider the problem of personalizing the assortment of products for each arriving customer. Using actual sales data from an online retailer, we demonstrate that personalization based on each customer's location can lead to over 10% improvements in revenue compared to a policy that treats all customers the same.

We propose a family of index-based policies that effectively coordinate the real-time assortment decisions with the backend supply chain constraints. We allow the demand process to be arbitrary and prove that our algorithms achieve an optimal competitive ratio. In addition, we show that our algorithms perform even better if the demand is known to be stationary. Our approach is also flexible and can be combined with existing methods in the literature, resulting in a hybrid algorithm that brings out the advantages of other methods while maintaining the worst-case performance guarantees.

Keywords: personalization, assortment optimization, choice models, online algorithms

Suggested Citation

Golrezaei, Negin and Nazerzadeh, Hamid and Rusmevichientong, Paat, Real-Time Optimization of Personalized Assortments (February 1, 2014). Management Science, 60(6):1532-1551, 2014, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2149344 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2149344

Negin Golrezaei

University of Southern California - Marshall School of Business ( email )

701 Exposition Blvd
Los Angeles, CA California 90089
United States

Hamid Nazerzadeh (Contact Author)

University of Southern California - Marshall School of Business ( email )

Bridge Memorial Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90089
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~nazerzad/

Paat Rusmevichientong

University of Southern California - Marshall School of Business ( email )

701 Exposition Blvd
Los Angeles, CA California 90089
United States

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