Patent ID: 8099294
Filing Date: 2012-01-17
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A method of managing an inventory of items to optimize revenues generated by selling the inventory of items by optimizing the revenue generated from a decision to sell or not sell one or more available items which are requested by a user by means of a request, the method comprising the steps of: calculating an online estimate, via a computer, of a marginal revenue associated with the evaluation of an appropriate price for each item at the time of the request and calculating an online estimate via a computer, of an opportunity cost associated with the decrement of the inventory resulting from a potential acceptance to sell each requested item by means of a comparison using a linear processing based methodology of a first network metric associated with a predicted optimal revenue of selling all remaining inventory items before the request and a second network metric associated with a predicted optimal revenue of selling all remaining inventory items after each requested item is removed from the inventory, wherein the comparison is repeated for another first metric of a sub-network related to specific characteristics of the requested item and another second metric of the sub-network; comparing via a computer, the estimates of the marginal revenue and opportunity costs; accepting via a computer, the request when the online estimate of the marginal revenue is substantially equal to or above the online estimate of the opportunity cost; updating, via a computer, the value of the first metric to equal that of the second metric for a future request if the request is accepted, wherein each estimate for each online request is in real time; forecasting, via a computer, a criterion related to the probability of the sale of each requested item to include in the calculation for estimating the opportunity cost.