Time: 2026 APR 29, 15:20-16:20

Venue: Room 215, E&F Hall, East Campus

Title: Assortment Optimization Under History-Dependent Effects

Abstract: This paper examines how to plan multi-period assortments when customer utility depends on historical assortments. We formulate this problem as a nonlinear integer programming problem. We reformulate the problem as a mixed-integer exponential cone program that state-of-the-art solvers can solve. We identify an optimal cyclic policy for an asymptotic regime. We present a  case study using a catering service dataset that shows that our model demonstrates good fitness and can effectively balance variety and revenue. This is a joint work with Taotao He and Yating Zhang from SJTU.

Speaker Bio: Professor ZHENG Huan is currently a Professor and Doctoral Supervisor in the Department of Management Science at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His primary research interests cover supply chain management and optimization, data analytics, and business decision-making. He has published numerous research papers in academic journals including Operations Research and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.