2013 INFORMS Annual Meeting Minneapolis
Plenaries and Keynotes
Presented by Guillermo Gallego, Columbia University
In this talk, Gallego discusses efforts by companies like Hewlett Packard to use big data to understand customer's buying and product substitution patterns under competition. He also reports on efforts to design and price bundles as branded products by companies like Air Canada, and efforts to offer consumption and fulfillment options by companies such as United Airlines and Hilton Hotels and Resorts. He also discusses how companies can mine sales, prices and product attributes to develop product similarity metrics to identify products whose prices are out of range, products that are candidate for discontinuance, and opportunities for the introduction of new products. Gallego further describes advances in assortment and price optimization that rely on discrete choice models. Finally, he discusses how these capabilities can be used to inform novel approaches to product and service design that rely on real options that allow sellers to hedge against demand uncertainty while providing tangible benefits to buyers.