Learning to Rank an Assortment of Products

We consider the product-ranking challenge that online retailers face when their customers typically behave as “window shoppers.” They form an impression of the assortment after browsing products ranked in the initial positions and then decide whether to continue browsing. We design online learning algorithms for product ranking that maximize the number of customers who engage with the site. Customers’ product preferences and attention spans are correlated and unknown to the retailer; furthermore, the retailer cannot exploit similarities across products, owing to the fact that the products are not necessarily characterized by a set of attributes. We develop a class of online learning-then-earning algorithms that prescribe a ranking to offer each customer, learning from preceding customers’ clickstream data to offer better rankings to subsequent customers. Our algorithms balance product popularity with diversity, the notion of appealing to a large variety of heterogeneous customers. We prove that our learning algorithms converge to a ranking that matches the best-known approximation factors for the offline, complete information setting. Finally, we partner with Wayfair — a multibillion-dollar home goods online retailer — to estimate the impact of our algorithms in practice via simulations using actual clickstream data, and we find that our algorithms yield a significant increase (5–30%) in the number of customers that engage with the site. This paper was accepted by J. George Shanthikumar for the Management Science Special Issue on Data-Driven Prescriptive Analytics.

Market basket analysis with association rules in the retail sector using Orange. Case Study: Appliances Sales Company

This research is conducted to analyze the shopping basket by using association rules in the retail area, more specifically in a home goods sales company such as appliances, computer items, furniture, and sporting goods, among others. With the rise of globalization and the advancement of technology, retail companies are constantly struggling to maintain and raise their profits, as well ordering the products and services that the customer wants to obtain. In this sense, they need a new approach to identify different objectives in order to be more competitive and successful, looking for new decision-making strategies. To achieve this goal, and to obtain clear and efficient strategies, by providing large amounts of data collected in business transactions, the need arises to intelligently analyze such data in order to extract useful knowledge that will support decision-making and, an understanding of the association patterns that occur in sales-customer behavior. Predicting which product will make the most profit, products that are sold together, this type of information is of great value for storing products in inventory. Knowing when a product is out of fashion can support inventory management effectively. In this sense, this work presents the rules of association of products obtained by analyzing the data with the FPGrowth algorithm using the Orange tool.

Rising inequality and trends in leisure

This paper develops a model that generates rising average leisure time and increasing leisure inequality along a path of balanced growth. Households derive utility from three sources: market goods, home goods and leisure. Home production and leisure are both activities that require time and capital. Households allocate time and capital to these non-market activities and supply labor. The dynamics are driven by activity-specific TFP growth and a spread in the distribution of household-specific labor market efficiencies. When the spread is set to replicate the increase in wage inequality across education groups, the model can account for the observed average time series and cross-sectional dynamics of leisure time in the U.S. over the last five decades.

Track 5.j Introduction: Innovation Through Design for Meaning

This track brings together researchers and practitioners to share and discuss the approach, subsequent outcomes, contributions and possible futures of the design for meaning landscape. For many fast moving consumer goods, home goods, office goods, vehicles, transport systems and elements of the built environment there are a growing number of instances in which a business opportunity can only be achieved by exploiting a new technology or a new cultural code (Holt and Cameron, 2010). Such cases of disruptive innovation or radical innovation are premised on the possibility of defining a new meaning for the potential consumers. The idea that design is a manner for making sense of things is frequently discussed in professional circles, as is the idea that design involves doing philosophy with the hands (Wendt 2015). For many practicing designers the activity of design cannot be separated from the intended meanings of the artefact which is being designed.

ANALISIS PEMANFAATAN RUANG PUBLIK PADA AKTIVITAS PENDUDUK DI PERMUKIMAN STUDI KASUS : PERMUKIMAN MLATEN KOTA SEMARANG

Mlaten settlement is one of the old neighborhoods in the city of Semarang that arrangement very concerned about the existence of a public space. The neighborhood was designed by Thomas Karsten in 1994 for low-income people with the design concept of "Garden City" which is very attentive to the good order of settlement patterns with emphasis on the existence of public space in the form of neighborhood parks and roads are equipped with a boulevard. Currently Mlaten settlements have become congested, the existence of public spaces began to have a variety of activities. The diversity of activities and multifunctional use of public space in residential Mlaten today shows the importance of public space as well as irregularities in the use of public space. Therefore, the study will be assessed linkage activities of people in the Settlement Mlaten to use public space to form their utilization patterns.The approach taken in this research using qualitative methods rationalistic approach. The analytical tool used is the 'behavioral mapping' to obtain information about the behavior, activities of individuals and groups associated with spatial systems through analysis of activity patterns and forms of space utilization.The conclusion from this study is the public space in Settlement Mlaten into a multifunctional space to support the activities of citizens outside the residential space, public space is not only a space that is used for public purposes, but also to meet the needs of personal citizens such as the emergence of a drying, parking, and put the used goods or merchandise that occur in public spaces. The pattern of use of public space in Settlement Mlaten showed a pattern that tends to accumulate at the edge of the garden or in the middle of the boulevard road to activities that are personal as drying/ washing, parking, putting the former home goods. While gathering or spreading pattern is happening on the utilization of public activity people like child's play, sports, or just sitting.Keywords: Settlement, Utilization Patterns, Public Space, and Activities.

Decompression zone deconstructed

Purpose Researchers have hypothesized that products located at the decompression zone of a store (the entrance area where customers adjust to the retail environment) do not influence sales of these particular products, because customers do not register things that are too close to store entrances. The purpose of this paper is to examine the validity of such a decompression zone account in actual field settings, and hence investigate whether or not placing products at the store entrance would increase customers’ likelihood to purchase these products. Design/methodology/approach Two field studies with a total sample of 715 customers were conducted, in which the entrance area of a home goods store was manipulated using a two-group quasi-experimental design. In Study 1, customers were (vs were not) exposed to candles and candle holders at the store entrance. In Study 2, an employee greeted customers at the store entrance with (vs without) the store’s products nearby. Findings Study 1 found that customers who were (vs were not) exposed to candles and candle holders at the store entrance purchased a significantly larger number of both these products. Study 2 replicated and generalized these findings. Although customers in the employee + products condition spent less money than customers in the employee-alone condition, the former group still purchased a significantly larger number of candles and candle holders. These findings go directly against a decompression zone account, but are consistent with research on exposure effects. Originality/value This paper is the first to empirically examine the validity of the decompression zone account in real retail settings. The paper also fills a more general gap in the store atmospherics literature, as only a very limited number of studies have dealt with the external parts of the retail environment, such as the store entrance area.

HOUSEHOLD INCOME DYNAMICS IN A LOWER-INCOME SMALL OPEN ECONOMY: A COMPARISON OF BANKING AND CROWDFUNDING REGIMES

This paper examines asset price and household income/consumption dynamics in a small open economy subject to terms of trade shocks, under two financial regimes. The first is a pure banking regime, in which firms borrow from banks for financing costs of labor, investment and intermediate goods for both the relatively riskless natural-resource traded sector and the non-traded sector. The second regime is more financially-inclusive banking/crowdfunding (BCF) regime, in which the households directly receive returns to capital from pooled lending to home-goods firms. Simulation results show that the banking regime better insulates the economy from negative shocks but limits the upside gain from positive shocks which would take place in the banking-crowdfunding regime.

HOME TO MARKET: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE CONSUMPTION TO OUTPUT RATIO

The United States' postwar period has seen an increase in aggregate market hours worked, a decline in home production hours, and an increase in the consumption to output ratio. A multisector growth model that allows for an increase in total factor productivity in the market sector relative to the home sector can account for these phenomena. Households shift hours to the more productive market sector and purchase measured market goods in favor of unmeasured home goods. This channel accounts for a quarter of the increase in the consumption to output ratio observed in the data from 1950 to 2007.

Aura: Designing Strategy and Status in Saudi Arabia

This case gives students the opportunity to explore the concept of organizational status as a competitive asset. CEO Noura Abdullah of Saudi furniture retailer Aura founded her company as a middle-market furniture and home goods store offering affordable yet design-savvy products. By many accounts, both tangible and intangible, Aura had been a success. By late 2014, Aura had drawn considerable attention from several high-status Saudi wedding planners and media outlets, including Harper's Bazaar Interiors, Elle Decor, and Martha Stewart Weddings. This attention yielded unusually strong conversion rates (the percentage of visitors to the store who made a purchase). Foot traffic, on the other hand, remained unexpectedly low, leading Abdullah to wonder whether the high-status affiliations had unintentionally signaled to mid-market consumers that they would not be able to afford Aura's products, keeping such customers away. Students will decide, along with Abdullah, how to handle this unique “problem” as Aura enters a growth phase to other Saudi and Middle Eastern markets.