An Online Algorithm for Learning Buyer Behavior under Realistic Pricing Restrictions

Debjyoti Saharoy; Theja Tulabandhula

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arXiv · 1803.01968

An Online Algorithm for Learning Buyer Behavior under Realistic Pricing Restrictions

Debjyoti Saharoy·Theja Tulabandhula

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Abstract

We propose a new efficient online algorithm to learn the parameters governing the purchasing behavior of a utility maximizing buyer, who responds to prices, in a repeated interaction setting. The key feature of our algorithm is that it can learn even non-linear buyer utility while working with arbitrary price constraints that the seller may impose. This overcomes a major shortcoming of previous approaches, which use unrealistic prices to learn these parameters making them unsuitable in practice.

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Debjyoti Saharoy, Theja Tulabandhula. 2018-03-06. An Online Algorithm for Learning Buyer Behavior under Realistic Pricing Restrictions. https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.01968

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