Patent Document ID: 8321260
Application ID: 12946327
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A product assortment planning system operable to determine scaled performance metric values for an assortment of products, the system comprising: a computer system including a processor, the computer system further comprising: a data store storing performance metric values for an assortment of products including a target assortment of products and a source assortment of products; a retrieval unit executed by the processor to retrieve the performance metric values for each product in the assortment of products; an equivalization unit executed by the processor to equivalize the performance metric values for the source assortment of products; a scaling unit executed by the processor, the scaling unit to determine incrementality assumptions, wherein the incrementality assumptions are an estimation of an amount of cannibalization that occurs for the target assortment of products as a result of combining the source assortment of products with the target assortment of products, and calculate scaled performance metric values for each product in the assortment of products based on the equivalized performance metric values and the incrementality assumptions; and an optimization unit executed by the processor to calculate an optimum product deletion order for the combined assortment of products, wherein to calculate an optimum product deletion order includes: testing deletion of each identified product to determine a net change in the performance metric for each of the products, and selecting a first product to delete based on the net change; estimating a recaptured performance metric for the deleted product based on at least one of the scaled performance metric values; reallocating the recaptured performance metric for the deleted product to the remaining products, and calculating the performance metric for the remaining products based on the reallocated recaptured performance metric; determining a new assortment of products comprised of the remaining products and the calculated performance metric for the remaining products, testing each product in the new assortment of products for deletion, selecting a next product for deletion based on the testing; and performing the determining a new assortment of products, the testing and the selecting until one product is remaining, wherein an order of deletion of each of the products represents the optimum product deletion order.