Patent ID: 7006981

Claim:
A method comprising A. obtaining historical information about sales associated with each of one or more different sizes of styles of items of commerce, B. determining historical demand behavior associated with the different sizes of styles of items of commerce by filtering the historical information about sales of those styles of items of commerce to remove sales data for each of one or more styles in each of one or more commerce locations that correspond to one or more time periods in which not all sizes of that style were presented to customers in that time period at that commerce location C. generating a size assortment recommendation based on i) the historical demand behavior and on ii) one or more objectives with respect to purchase or allocation decisions about assortments of the different sizes, D. the step of generating a size assortment recommendation including identifying a plurality of size profiles, each maximizing on a per commerce location, per time period, per class basis an expected value of realized profit minus a weighting factor times a customer service function, where the customer service function is a function of a number of time periods between total stockout of a style and a first time period that any size of that style stocks out, and where a class comprises one or more styles.