System and method for determining retail-business-rule coefficients from current prices

Abstract

Business rules can govern a single price or they can define relationships between different products involving two or more decision prices. One problem that retailers can face is that business rules are generally not codified and are rarely followed consistently, and thus it can be difficult to articulate existing business rules or generate new business rules. However, existing price information inherently contains industry knowledge and experience, even if retailers find it difficult to express that knowledge. The disclosed technology generates business rules by reverse engineering rule bounds and coefficients from existing price information. The reverse engineered rule bounds and coefficients can be used in price optimization to generate recommended prices for retail products that optimize revenue and profit while complying with a set of business rules.

We claim: 
     
         1 . A computer-implemented method comprising:
 obtaining existing price information for one or more products;   The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , wherein for each bounded rule in the set of   calculating, via a processor, one or more target prices based at least in part on the existing price information;   generating price bounds for each rule in a set of bounded rules, wherein the set of bounded rules is based at least in part on the one or more calculated target prices;   generating rule parameters for each rule in a set of comparative rules, wherein the set of comparative rules is based at least in part on the existing price information; and   generating at least one recommended price for at least one of the one or more products by applying the price bounds and the rule parameters to the existing price information.