Method and system for designing a catalog with optimized product placement
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsJayanta Basak, Rajendra Sureka
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The current invention provides a method, system and computer program product for designing a catalog with optimized placement of items. Past user transactions are used to estimate the effect of nature and placement of an item on the response of users to the catalogs in terms of items clicked on or items purchased. These estimations are used to optimize the placement of items in a catalog in order to maximize the gains for a merchant specified objective, which can be in terms of revenues, sales or the number of clicks. Various stochastic and deterministic optimization functions are used for the purpose of optimization.
Claims25
A method for automatically designing a catalog for a plurality of items using a computer system, the method comprising the steps of:
- estimating a relationship between placement of an item in a catalog and corresponding user responses, the user responses being obtained from a transaction history;
- determining an optimized position for each item using the estimated relationships;
- and
- forming a catalog with the items being placed at determined optimized positions.
A system for automatically designing a catalog for a plurality of items, the system comprising:
- a mechanism operable for estimating a relationship between placement of an item in a catalog and corresponding user responses, the user responses being obtained from a transaction history;
- a unit operable for determining an optimized position for each item using the estimated relationships;
- and
- a device operable for forming a catalog with the items being placed at determined optimized positions.
A program storage device readable by computer, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by said computer to perform a method for automatically designing a catalog for a plurality of items, the method comprising:
- estimating a relationship between placement of an item in a catalog and corresponding user responses, the user responses being obtained from a transaction history;
- determining an optimized position for each item using the estimated relationships;
- and
- forming a catalog with the items being placed at determined optimized positions.
A method for placement of a plurality of items in a catalog, the placement being directed to achieve a specified objective, the method comprising the steps of:
- deploying a plurality of initial catalogs with different placements for the plurality of items;
- obtaining user responses for the plurality of initial catalogs, wherein the plurality of catalogs refer to any of different catalogs for different groups of users over the same period of time, different catalogs for the same group of users over different periods of time, and a combination of both;
- computing catalog parameters from the user responses;
- and
- optimizing placement of items in the catalog using the catalog parameters.
A method for dynamically optimizing an online catalog, the catalog being designed based on user response data of previously initial catalogs, the method comprising the steps of:
- computing catalog parameters from user response data;
- modeling a merchant specified objective as an optimization function in terms of placement of item in a catalog and catalog parameters;
- evaluating the optimization function to identify an optimal placement of items in the catalog;
- forming a catalog with the items being placed at positions obtained from evaluating the optimization function;
- deploying a formed catalog;
- and
- updating user response data based on response to the formed catalog,
- wherein steps a to f are repeated to dynamically update the catalog based on recent user responses.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.