Patent ID: 8571908

Claim:
A method of allocating commodity shelves in a supermarket, the method comprising: obtaining shopping paths of a plurality of customers in the supermarket; classifying the plurality of customers, according to a predetermined standard, into a plurality of customer classes; based on the shopping paths of the plurality of customers, determining, by a processor on a computer, one or more shopping paths adopted by more customers in the plurality of customer classes as frequent shopping paths of a class of customers of the plurality of customer classes; calculating a see-buy rate of a commodity for each of the plurality of customer classes based on shopping lists and the frequent shopping paths of the plurality of customers, wherein the see-buy rate of the commodity for the class of customers refers to a probability to purchase the commodity for the class of customers when the class of customers sees the commodity; calculating a location for a set of commodities for a shelf where each commodity in the set of commodities is located when total expected benefits for the set of commodities are maximized during a certain period of time, wherein the total expected benefits include a sum of an expected benefit for each commodity in the set of commodities based on the see-buy rate and the frequent shopping paths when each commodity in the set of commodities is located in its own shelf, and wherein, when placing an i th commodity on a j th shelf, total expected benefits P (i, j) which is based on the see-buy rate and the frequent shopping path(s) is: P ⁡ ( i , j ) = profit ⁡ ( i ) · ∑ k ⁢ [ num ⁡ ( k , j ) · R bs ⁡ ( i , k ) wherein k denotes the class of customers, R bs (i, k) denotes a see-buy rate of the i th commodity for the k th class of customers, and num (k,j) denotes a number of actual shopping paths corresponding to the frequent shopping path(s) of the k th class of customers adjacent to the shelf j within the certain period of time, and profit (i) denotes a unit profit of the commodity i.