Patent ID: 8838469
Filing Date: 2014-09-16
Classification: G06N,G06Q

Abstract:
1. A computer implemented method for determining a change of store space and for determining which of a plurality of products are to be added or eliminated, to achieve a desired impact on a selected store performance metric of interest, the computer implemented method comprising: defining store performance metrics, comprising at least two of: a gross margin, an adjusted gross margin, a contribution margin and predicted sales; clustering, by a hardware processor, stores, based on similarities in sales volume, and sales productivity per linear foot of facing of said stores to generate groups of stores comprising: a first group of stores with low sales per the linear foot of facing, a second group of stores with medium sales per the linear foot of facing, and a third group of stores with high sales per the linear foot of facing; aggregating, by the hardware processor, the plurality of products into a plurality of product segments; defining a plurality of planograms and further defining each of the plurality of product segments that apply to each of the plurality of planograms, based upon physical dimensions of each of the plurality of planograms and the plurality of products that comprise each of the plurality of product segments; performing data preparation for curve fitting to generate a plurality of curve data sets based on every combination of: generating, by the hardware processor, space elasticity curves for the every combination of performance metric, store cluster, planogram and segment, and fitting, by a mathematical regression process, a space elasticity curve from the space elasticity curves into an S-shaped curve, when said space elasticity curve, out of all the space elasticity curves, follows a diminishing return under a Pareto type distribution; scaling coefficients corresponding to the space elasticity curves; selecting, by a user, at least one of the first group of stores, the second group of stores, and the third group of stores, the store performance metric of interest from the defined store performance metrics, planograms from the plurality of planograms, and product segments from the plurality of product segments; retrieving, by the user, the scaled coefficients corresponding to the space elasticity curves, and selecting, by the user, the desired impact of the selected store performance metric of interest; regenerating the space elasticity curves from the scaled coefficients corresponding to the space elasticity curves; generating, by the hardware processor, systemic items from the regenerated space elasticity curves to determine, for each of the synthetic items, the store space expressed by the linear foot of facing impacting the selected store performance metric of interest; sorting using the fitted space elasticity curve, the synthetic items across the plurality of selected product segments to further determine an optimum increase or decrease in the store space across the selected planograms and the selected product segments; combining the synthetic items into synthetic planograms using space increments of the linear foot of facing defined by the user; determining, for each of the synthetic planograms, a target number of the plurality of products in each of the selected product segments that impact the selected store performance metric of interest, and based on said target number of the plurality of products in each of the selected product segments: determining, on an incremental basis, the optimum increase or decrease in the store space and which of the plurality of products are to be added or eliminated to achieve the desired impact on the selected store performance metric of interest to each of the selected planograms and the selected product segments.