The main contribution of this paper is to provide best-possible approximability bounds for assortment planning under a general choice model, where customer choices are modeled through an arbitrary distribution over ranked lists of their preferred products, subsuming most random utility choice...

Consider-then-choose models, borne out by empirical literature in marketing and psychology, explain that customers choose among alternatives in two phases, by first screening products to decide which alternatives to consider, before then ranking them. In this paper, we develop a dynamic...

This document presents supporting materials for the following publication: Farias, Jagabathula and Shah (2012), 'A Nonparametric Approach to Modeling Choice with Limited Data,' Management Science, Articles in Advance, pp. 1-18. Choice models are today ubiquitous across a range of applications in...

We consider the problem of "hyper-localizing" product assortments at a fashion retailer — that is, customizing the offerings to the particular preferences of customers visiting the store, so that customers can easily find the products that fit their tastes and purchase more. To make this...

This paper presents a general class of dynamic stochastic optimization problems we refer to as Stochastic Depletion Problems. A number of challenging dynamic optimization problems of practical interest are stochastic depletion problems. Optimal solutions for such problems are difficult to...

We consider an agent interacting with an unmodeled environment. At each time, the agent makes an observation, takes an action, and incurs a cost. Its actions can influence future observations and costs. The goal is to minimize the long-term average cost. We propose a novel algorithm, known as...

Problem Definition: Interest subventions (subsidies) on crop loans are a common feature of rural credit markets in developing countries. This study evaluates the impact of an interest subsidy program for the Kisan Credit Card (KCC) scheme - India’s flagship program to provide short-term...