Patent ID: 7996331

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for determining regular prices, comprising: receiving, using one or more data processors, data about items to be priced, wherein each item has an integer pricing requirement; using, using the one or more data processors, the received data to form one or more sub-problem item groups, wherein each sub-problem item group is formed based upon one or more pre-determined sub-problem grouping criteria, and wherein each sub-problem item group includes the received data corresponding to one or more items within that sub-problem group; optimizing, using the one or more data processors, an objective function using a non-linear optimization program, one or more pre-selected business constraints, and the data corresponding to one or more items within a sub-problem group, wherein the non-linear optimization program ignores any of the integer pricing requirements when optimizing the objective function; using, using the one or more data processors, the optimized objective function to attempt to generate one or more target item prices for the sub-problem item group, wherein when the one or more target item prices are not generated using the optimized objective function, successive runs of a linear optimization program are used to generate the one or more target item prices; and determining, using the one or more data processors, one or more regular prices for the sub-problem item group using a mixed integer linear program, wherein determining includes minimizing one or more distances associated with the one or more target item prices.