On the Relationship Between Inventory Costs and Variety Benefits in Retail Assortments
用多项逻辑模型描述消费者选择、用报童模型刻画库存成本，分析零售商如何选择产品子集和订购量，揭示最优品类的简单结构及影响品种多样性的因素。
Consider a category of product variants distinguished by some attribute such as color or flavor. A retailer must construct an assortment for the category, i.e., select a subset variants to stock and determine purchase quantities for each offered variant. We analyze this problem using a multinomial logit model to describe the consumer choice process and a newsboy model to represent the retailer's inventory cost. We show that the optimal assortment has a simple structure and provide insights on how various factors affect the optimal level of assortment variety. We also develop a formal definition of the level of fashion in a category using the theory of majorization and examine its implications for category profits.