Account-Level Modeling for Trade Promotion: An Application of a Constrained Parameter Hierarchical Model
针对制造商优化零售层面贸易促销预算分配的问题，提出一种带不等式约束的分层模型，解决标准回归中系数符号错误的问题，基于75多家零售商数据验证了利润提升效果。
Abstract We consider the problem of utilizing data at the retail/market level on sales and marketing mix variables to help manufacturers optimize the allocation of trade promotional budgets across areas. Major consumer packaged goods manufacturers budget at least one-half of their total marketing expenses to trade promotions. Trade promotional deals are designed to encourage retailers to promote products by temporarily reducing the price, putting them in in-store displays, or advertising in local media. A profit-based trade promotional allocation system will require estimates of the responsiveness of sales at each retailer to a given promotion. A major barrier to the use of retailer data is the proliferation of incorrectly signed coefficients in standard least squares analyses. Even more sophisticated adaptive shrinkage methods will not remove the problem of improper signs. We propose a hierarchical model to modeling retailer response that uses a first-stage prior with inequality constraints on the regression coefficients. We demonstrate the usefulness of our modeling approach with data on more than 75 retailers. We find substantial profit opportunities from our response-based promotional allocation scheme over and above what might be achieved by a standard volume-oriented allocation scheme.