On behalf of the Scientific Committee of the de Finetti Risk Seminars, we are glad to invite you to participate at the following Lecture

Learning Consumer Tastes from Dynamic Assortments: A Nonparametric Bayesian Model

Canan Ulu

Georgetown University

Abstract.

We study dynamic assortment decisions of a firm learning about consumer tastes by observing sales of the products offered. Each period, the firm offers an assortment to maximize expected total profits over a finite horizon given its subjective beliefs on consumer tastes. The consumers choose a product that maximizes their own utility and the firm updates its beliefs on consumer tastes after having observed the sales of each product in the assortment. We model consumer tastes as locations on a Hotelling line and develop a nonparametric Bayesian learning model using Polya tree priors that makes no assumptions on the form of the consumer taste distribution. Our nonparametric learning model results in optimal profits that are robust to misspecification in the consumer taste distribution. We develop upper bounds on the firm’s total profit based on information relaxations and study the performance of various heuristic policies with respect to these upper bounds.

LOCATION: The seminar will be held on Wednesday, December 13, at 18.00 at room 3-E4-SR03, Bocconi University, Via Rontgen https://maps.google.com/?q=Via+Rontgen+1&entry=gmail&source=g 1, 3rd floor, Milano. A refreshment will be offered at 17.30.

Scientific Committee:

Prof. Simone Cerreia-Voglio (Univ. Bocconi) Prof. Marco Frittelli (Univ. degli Studi di Milano) Prof. Fabio Maccheroni (Univ. Bocconi) Prof. Massimo Marinacci (Univ. Bocconi) Prof. Emanuela Rosazza Gianin (Univ. Milano-Bicocca) Dott. Marco Maggis (Univ. degli Studi di Milano)

************************************************** Emanuela Rosazza Gianin Dipartimento di Statistica e Metodi Quantitativi Università di Milano-Bicocca Edificio U7 – 4° Piano Via Bicocca degli Arcimboldi, 8 20126 Milano

Tel. 02 64483208 Fax. 02 64483105 e-mail: emanuela.rosazza1@unimib.it

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