Allocating products on shelves under merchandising rules: Multi-level product families with display directions

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2018

Authors

Teresa Bianchi Aguiar (Author) FEUP; Elsa Silva (Author) Other; Luís Guimarães (Author) FEUP; Maria Antónia Carravilla (Author) FEUP; José Fernando Oliveira (Author) FEUP

Journal

Title: Omega

Vol. 76

Pages: 47-62

ISSN: 0305-0483

Publisher: Elsevier

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 19 Citations

Scopus - 28 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-00M-PRJ

DOI: 10.1016/j.omega.2017.04.002

Abstract (EN): Retailers' individual products are categorized as part of product families. Merchandising rules specify how the products should be arranged on the shelves using product families, creating more structured displays capable of increasing the viewers' attention. This paper presents a novel mixed integer programming formulation for the Shelf Space Allocation Problem considering two innovative features emerging from merchandising rules: hierarchical product families and display directions. The formulation uses single commodity flow constraints to model product sequencing and explores the product families' hierarchy to reduce the combinatorial nature of the problem. Based on the formulation, a mathematical programming-based heuristic was also developed that uses product families to decompose the problem into a sequence of sub-problems. To improve performance, its original design was adapted following two directions: recovery from infeasible solutions and reduction of solution times. A new set of real case benchmark instances is also provided, which was used to assess the formulation and the matheuristic. This approach will allow retailers to efficiently create planograms capable of following merchandising rules and optimizing shelf space revenue.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 16