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1673a54332b2afc905722048c26f5a4c-Paper-Conference.pdf

Neural Information Processing Systems

We propose a randomized dynamic pricing policy based on a variant of the Online Newton Stepalgorithm (ONS)thatachievesaO(d T log(T))regretguarantee underan adversarial arrival model.


Bounded-Loss Private Prediction Markets

Rafael Frongillo, Bo Waggoner

Neural Information Processing Systems

Prior work has investigated variations of prediction markets that preserve participants' (differential) privacy, which formed the basis of useful mechanisms for purchasing data for machine learning objectives. Such markets required potentially unlimited financial subsidy, however, making them impractical.


Bounded-Loss Private Prediction Markets

Rafael Frongillo, Bo Waggoner

Neural Information Processing Systems

Prior work has investigated variations of prediction markets that preserve participants' (differential) privacy, which formed the basis of useful mechanisms for purchasing data for machine learning objectives. Such markets required potentially unlimited financial subsidy, however, making them impractical.




How Do Consumers Really Choose: Exposing Hidden Preferences with the Mixture of Experts Model

Vallarino, Diego

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Understanding consumer choice is fundamental to marketing and management research, as firms increasingly seek to personalize offerings and optimize customer engagement. Traditional choice modeling frameworks, such as multinomial logit (MNL) and mixed logit models, impose rigid parametric assumptions that limit their ability to capture the complexity of consumer decision-making. This study introduces the Mixture of Experts (MoE) framework as a machine learning-driven alternative that dynamically segments consumers based on latent behavioral patterns. By leveraging probabilistic gating functions and specialized expert networks, MoE provides a flexible, nonparametric approach to modeling heterogeneous preferences. Empirical validation using large-scale retail data demonstrates that MoE significantly enhances predictive accuracy over traditional econometric models, capturing nonlinear consumer responses to price variations, brand preferences, and product attributes. The findings underscore MoEs potential to improve demand forecasting, optimize targeted marketing strategies, and refine segmentation practices. By offering a more granular and adaptive framework, this study bridges the gap between data-driven machine learning approaches and marketing theory, advocating for the integration of AI techniques in managerial decision-making and strategic consumer insights.


Adventures in Demand Analysis Using AI

Bach, Philipp, Chernozhukov, Victor, Klaassen, Sven, Spindler, Martin, Teichert-Kluge, Jan, Vijaykumar, Suhas

arXiv.org Machine Learning

This paper advances empirical demand analysis by integrating multimodal product representations derived from artificial intelligence (AI). Using a detailed dataset of toy cars on \textit{Amazon.com}, we combine text descriptions, images, and tabular covariates to represent each product using transformer-based embedding models. These embeddings capture nuanced attributes, such as quality, branding, and visual characteristics, that traditional methods often struggle to summarize. Moreover, we fine-tune these embeddings for causal inference tasks. We show that the resulting embeddings substantially improve the predictive accuracy of sales ranks and prices and that they lead to more credible causal estimates of price elasticity. Notably, we uncover strong heterogeneity in price elasticity driven by these product-specific features. Our findings illustrate that AI-driven representations can enrich and modernize empirical demand analysis. The insights generated may also prove valuable for applied causal inference more broadly.


Modeling Reference-dependent Choices with Graph Neural Networks

Zhang, Liang, Liu, Guannan, Wu, Junjie, Tan, Yong

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

While the classic Prospect Theory has highlighted the reference-dependent and comparative nature of consumers' product evaluation processes, few models have successfully integrated this theoretical hypothesis into data-driven preference quantification, particularly in the realm of recommender systems development. To bridge this gap, we propose a new research problem of modeling reference-dependent preferences from a data-driven perspective, and design a novel deep learning-based framework named Attributed Reference-dependent Choice Model for Recommendation (ArcRec) to tackle the inherent challenges associated with this problem. ArcRec features in building a reference network from aggregated historical purchase records for instantiating theoretical reference points, which is then decomposed into product attribute specific sub-networks and represented through Graph Neural Networks. In this way, the reference points of a consumer can be encoded at the attribute-level individually from her past experiences but also reflect the crowd influences. ArcRec also makes novel contributions to quantifying consumers' reference-dependent preferences using a deep neural network-based utility function that integrates both interest-inspired and price-inspired preferences, with their complex interaction effects captured by an attribute-aware price sensitivity mechanism. Most importantly, ArcRec introduces a novel Attribute-level Willingness-To-Pay measure to the reference-dependent utility function, which captures a consumer's heterogeneous salience of product attributes via observing her attribute-level price tolerance to a product. Empirical evaluations on both synthetic and real-world online shopping datasets demonstrate ArcRec's superior performances over fourteen state-of-the-art baselines.


RetailSynth: Synthetic Data Generation for Retail AI Systems Evaluation

Xia, Yu, Arian, Ali, Narayanamoorthy, Sriram, Mabry, Joshua

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Significant research effort has been devoted in recent years to developing personalized pricing, promotions, and product recommendation algorithms that can leverage rich customer data to learn and earn. Systematic benchmarking and evaluation of these causal learning systems remains a critical challenge, due to the lack of suitable datasets and simulation environments. In this work, we propose a multi-stage model for simulating customer shopping behavior that captures important sources of heterogeneity, including price sensitivity and past experiences. We embedded this model into a working simulation environment -- RetailSynth. RetailSynth was carefully calibrated on publicly available grocery data to create realistic synthetic shopping transactions. Multiple pricing policies were implemented within the simulator and analyzed for impact on revenue, category penetration, and customer retention. Applied researchers can use RetailSynth to validate causal demand models for multi-category retail and to incorporate realistic price sensitivity into emerging benchmarking suites for personalized pricing, promotions, and product recommendations.