Algorithms for Marketing-Mix Optimization

作者：Gudmundsson Joachim; Morin Pat^*; Smid Michiel

来源：Algorithmica, 2011, 60(4): 1004-1016.

DOI：10.1007/s00453-010-9393-1

• Algorithms
• Computational geometry
• Marketing
• Market-mix

Algorithms for determining quality/cost/price tradeoffs in saturated markets are considered. A product is modeled by d real-valued qualities whose sum determines the unit cost of producing the product. This leads to the following optimization problem: given a set of n customers, each of whom has certain minimum quality requirements and a maximum price they are willing to pay, design a new product and select a price for that product in order to maximize the resulting profit.
An O(nlog n) time algorithm is given for the case, d=1, of products having a single quality, and O(n(log n) (d+1)) time approximation algorithms are given for products with any constant number, d, of qualities. To achieve the latter result, an O(nk (d-1)) bound on the complexity of an arrangement of homothetic simplices in a"e (d) is given, where k is the maximum number of simplices that all contain a single points.

• 出版日期2011-8