IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/oropre/v55y2007i6p1001-1021.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Demand Estimation and Assortment Optimization Under Substitution: Methodology and Application

Author

Listed:
  • A. Gürhan Kök

    (Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708)

  • Marshall L. Fisher

    (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104)

Abstract

Assortment planning at a retailer entails both selecting the set of products to be carried and setting inventory levels for each product. We study an assortment planning model in which consumers might accept substitutes when their favorite product is unavailable. We develop an algorithmic process to help retailers compute the best assortment for each store. First, we present a procedure for estimating the parameters of substitution behavior and demand for products in each store, including the products that have not been previously carried in that store. Second, we propose an iterative optimization heuristic for solving the assortment planning problem. In a computational study, we find that its solutions, on average, are within 0.5% of the optimal solution. Third, we establish new structural properties (based on the heuristic solution) that relate the products included in the assortment and their inventory levels to product characteristics such as gross margin, case-pack sizes, and demand variability. We applied our method at Albert Heijn, a supermarket chain in The Netherlands. Comparing the recommendations of our system with the existing assortments suggests a more than 50% increase in profits.

Suggested Citation

  • A. Gürhan Kök & Marshall L. Fisher, 2007. "Demand Estimation and Assortment Optimization Under Substitution: Methodology and Application," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 55(6), pages 1001-1021, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:55:y:2007:i:6:p:1001-1021
    DOI: 10.1287/opre.1070.0409
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.1070.0409
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/opre.1070.0409?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Campo, Katia & Gijsbrechts, Els & Nisol, Patricia, 2004. "Dynamics in consumer response to product unavailability: do stock-out reactions signal response to permanent assortment reductions?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 57(8), pages 834-843, August.
    2. Ravi Anupindi & Maqbool Dada & Sachin Gupta, 1998. "Estimation of Consumer Demand with Stock-Out Based Substitution: An Application to Vending Machine Products," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(4), pages 406-423.
    3. Fitzsimons, Gavan J, 2000. "Consumer Response to Stockouts," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 27(2), pages 249-266, September.
    4. Brian Downs & Richard Metters & John Semple, 2001. "Managing Inventory with Multiple Products, Lags in Delivery, Resource Constraints, and Lost Sales: A Mathematical Programming Approach," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(3), pages 464-479, March.
    5. Zeynep Müge Avsar & Melike Baykal‐Gürsoy, 2002. "Inventory control under substitutable demand: A stochastic game application," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(4), pages 359-375, June.
    6. Kalyan Talluri & Garrett van Ryzin, 2004. "Revenue Management Under a General Discrete Choice Model of Consumer Behavior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(1), pages 15-33, January.
    7. Bretthauer, Kurt M. & Shetty, Bala, 2002. "The nonlinear knapsack problem - algorithms and applications," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 138(3), pages 459-472, May.
    8. Alberto Caprara & David Pisinger & Paolo Toth, 1999. "Exact Solution of the Quadratic Knapsack Problem," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 11(2), pages 125-137, May.
    9. Paul E. Green & Abba M. Krieger, 1985. "Models and Heuristics for Product Line Selection," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 4(1), pages 1-19.
    10. Siddharth Mahajan & Garrett van Ryzin, 2001. "Stocking Retail Assortments Under Dynamic Consumer Substitution," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 49(3), pages 334-351, June.
    11. Peter M. Guadagni & John D. C. Little, 1983. "A Logit Model of Brand Choice Calibrated on Scanner Data," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 2(3), pages 203-238.
    12. Garrett van Ryzin & Siddharth Mahajan, 1999. "On the Relationship Between Inventory Costs and Variety Benefits in Retail Assortments," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 45(11), pages 1496-1509, November.
    13. Serguei Netessine & Nils Rudi, 2003. "Centralized and Competitive Inventory Models with Demand Substitution," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 51(2), pages 329-335, April.
    14. K. Sridhar Moorthy, 1984. "Market Segmentation, Self-Selection, and Product Line Design," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 3(4), pages 288-307.
    15. Stephen J. Hoch & Eric T. Bradlow & Brian Wansink, 1999. "The Variety of an Assortment," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(4), pages 527-546.
    16. Rajaram, Kumar & Tang, Christopher S., 2001. "The impact of product substitution on retail merchandising," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 135(3), pages 582-601, December.
    17. Stephen A. Smith & Narendra Agrawal, 2000. "Management of Multi-Item Retail Inventory Systems with Demand Substitution," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 48(1), pages 50-64, February.
    18. Steven M. Shugan, 1989. "Product Assortment in a Triopoly," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(3), pages 304-320, March.
    19. Gérard P. Cachon & Christian Terwiesch & Yi Xu, 2005. "Retail Assortment Planning in the Presence of Consumer Search," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 7(4), pages 330-346, August.
    20. Marcel Corstjens & Peter Doyle, 1981. "A Model for Optimizing Retail Space Allocations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(7), pages 822-833, July.
    21. Rajaram, Kumar, 2001. "Assortment planning in fashion retailing: methodology, application and analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 129(1), pages 186-208, February.
    22. Pradeep K. Chintagunta, 1993. "Investigating Purchase Incidence, Brand Choice and Purchase Quantity Decisions of Households," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 12(2), pages 184-208.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Narendra Agrawal & Stephen A. Smith, 2003. "Optimal retail assortments for substitutable items purchased in sets," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(7), pages 793-822, October.
    2. Hübner, Alexander H. & Kuhn, Heinrich, 2012. "Retail category management: State-of-the-art review of quantitative research and software applications in assortment and shelf space management," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 199-209, April.
    3. Shin, Hojung & Park, Soohoon & Lee, Euncheol & Benton, W.C., 2015. "A classification of the literature on the planning of substitutable products," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 246(3), pages 686-699.
    4. Mehmet Fadılog̃lu & Oya Karaşan & Mustafa Pınar, 2010. "A model and case study for efficient shelf usage and assortment analysis," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 180(1), pages 105-124, November.
    5. Vishal Gaur & Dorothée Honhon, 2006. "Assortment Planning and Inventory Decisions Under a Locational Choice Model," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(10), pages 1528-1543, October.
    6. Miller, Christopher M. & Smith, Stephen A. & McIntyre, Shelby H. & Achabal, Dale D., 2010. "Optimizing and Evaluating Retail Assortments for Infrequently Purchased Products," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 159-171.
    7. Gustavo Vulcano & Garrett van Ryzin & Richard Ratliff, 2012. "Estimating Primary Demand for Substitutable Products from Sales Transaction Data," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 60(2), pages 313-334, April.
    8. Stelios Tsafarakis & Charalampos Saridakis & Nikolaos Matsatsinis & George Baltas, 2016. "Private labels and retail assortment planning: a differential evolution approach," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 247(2), pages 677-692, December.
    9. Yücel, Eda & Karaesmen, Fikri & Salman, F. Sibel & Türkay, Metin, 2009. "Optimizing product assortment under customer-driven demand substitution," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 199(3), pages 759-768, December.
    10. Lingxiu Dong & Panos Kouvelis & Zhongjun Tian, 2009. "Dynamic Pricing and Inventory Control of Substitute Products," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 11(2), pages 317-339, December.
    11. Yalçın Akçay & Yunke Li & Harihara Prasad Natarajan, 2020. "Category Inventory Planning With Service Level Requirements and Dynamic Substitutions," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(11), pages 2553-2578, November.
    12. A. Gürhan Kök & Yi Xu, 2011. "Optimal and Competitive Assortments with Endogenous Pricing Under Hierarchical Consumer Choice Models," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(9), pages 1546-1563, February.
    13. Joonkyum Lee & Vishal Gaur & Suresh Muthulingam & Gary F. Swisher, 2016. "Stockout-Based Substitution and Inventory Planning in Textbook Retailing," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 18(1), pages 104-121, February.
    14. Mantrala, Murali K. & Levy, Michael & Kahn, Barbara E. & Fox, Edward J. & Gaidarev, Peter & Dankworth, Bill & Shah, Denish, 2009. "Why is Assortment Planning so Difficult for Retailers? A Framework and Research Agenda," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 71-83.
    15. Marshall Fisher & Ramnath Vaidyanathan, 2014. "A Demand Estimation Procedure for Retail Assortment Optimization with Results from Implementations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(10), pages 2401-2415, October.
    16. Boxiao Chen & Xiuli Chao, 2020. "Dynamic Inventory Control with Stockout Substitution and Demand Learning," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(11), pages 5108-5127, November.
    17. Wan, Mingchao & Huang, Yihui & Zhao, Lei & Deng, Tianhu & Fransoo, Jan C., 2018. "Demand estimation under multi-store multi-product substitution in high density traditional retail," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 266(1), pages 99-111.
    18. Mehrani, Saharnaz & Sefair, Jorge A., 2022. "Robust assortment optimization under sequential product unavailability," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 303(3), pages 1027-1043.
    19. Victor Martínez-de-Albéniz & Sumit Kunnumkal, 2022. "A Model for Integrated Inventory and Assortment Planning," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(7), pages 5049-5067, July.
    20. Wallace J. Hopp & Xiaowei Xu, 2008. "A Static Approximation for Dynamic Demand Substitution with Applications in a Competitive Market," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 56(3), pages 630-645, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:55:y:2007:i:6:p:1001-1021. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.