Patent ID: 8082175

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of providing a promotion plan for merchandising of products for sale by an enterprise comprising: receiving base data for said products, said base data including allowable offers for said products and price rules that affect said offers; establishing, by a processor, a margin budget for said promotion plan, said margin budget defining an amount of margin, relative to a non-promotion price, said enterprise is willing to forgo for a promotion event implementing said promotion plan and is equal to a margin at said non-promotion price minus a margin at a promotion price; generating, by a processor, a scenario for said promotion plan in response to said base data; optimizing, by the processor, said scenario to resolve a strategy solution for said promotion plan that includes three objectives of said enterprise to obtain decisions for said promotion plan in accordance with said promotion strategy, said decisions being constrained by said margin budget and said optimizing comprises: for said each of said products, identifying promotion choices of said allowable offers as affected by said price rules; modeling market demand for said each of said products to receive demand outcomes responsive to said promotion choices; and utilizing said demand outcomes to obtain said decisions; identifying extreme points for said each of said products from said demand outcomes; finding first global extreme points for all of said products from said extreme points, said first global extreme points characterizing a trade-off between realizing a first and second one of objectives; finding second global extreme points for all of said products from said extreme points, said second global extreme points characterizing a trade-off between realizing said first objective and a third one of objectives; finding intermediate global extreme points between said first and second global extreme points that characterize a trade-off between realizing said first, second, and third objectives; and employing said first, second, and intermediate global extreme points in optimizing said scenario; and presenting, by the processor, said promotion plan indicating said obtained decisions for implementation by said enterprise during said promotion event, said obtained decisions including a list of said products, each of said products in said list being associated with one of said offers and one of said price rules.