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On the estimation of discrete choice models to capture irrational customer behaviors

Sanjay Dominik Jena, Andrea Lodi, Claudio Sole

arXiv 8 Sep 2021 · Econometrics · publishedINFORMS journal on computing (2022) · 7 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2109.03882 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

The Random Utility Maximization model is by far the most adopted framework to estimate consumer choice behavior. However, behavioral economics has provided strong empirical evidence of irrational choice behavior, such as halo effects, that are incompatible with this framework. Models belonging to the Random Utility Maximization family may therefore not accurately capture such irrational behavior. Hence, more general choice models, overcoming such limitations, have been proposed. However, the flexibility of such models comes at the price of increased risk of overfitting. As such, estimating such models remains a challenge. In this work, we propose an estimation method for the recently proposed Generalized Stochastic Preference choice model, which subsumes the family of Random Utility Maximization models and is capable of capturing halo effects. Specifically, we show how to use partially-ranked preferences to efficiently model rational and irrational customer types from transaction data. Our estimation procedure is based on column generation, where relevant customer types are efficiently extracted by expanding a tree-like data structure containing the customer behaviors. Further, we propose a new dominance rule among customer types whose effect is to prioritize low orders of interactions among products. An extensive set of experiments assesses the predictive accuracy of the proposed approach. Our results show that accounting for irrational preferences can boost predictive accuracy by 12.5% on average, when tested on a real-world dataset from a large chain of grocery and drug stores.

Citation extraction

49
references
131
in-text mentions
49
distinct cited
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self-citations
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main-text words

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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Jena, Sanjay Dominik, Andrea Lodi, Hugo Palmer, Claudio Sole (2020) A partially ranked choice model for large-scale data-driven assortment optimization self1.000186100%
2Berbeglia, G (2018) The generalized stochastic preference choice model1.000167100%
3Jagabathula, S., P. Rusmevichientong (2019) The limit of rationality in choice modeling: Formulation, computation, and implications1.00094100%
4van Ryzin, G., G. Vulcano (2015) A Market Discovery Algorithm to Estimate a General Class of Nonparametric Choice Models1.00085100%
5Bertsimas, D., V. Misic (2016) Data-driven assortment optimization1.00054100%
6Berbeglia, G., A. Garassino, G. Vulcano (2018) A comparative empirical study of discrete choice models in retail operations1.00054100%
7Maragheh, R. Y., A. Chronopoulou, J. M. Davis (2018) A customer choice model with halo effect1.00053100%
8Farias, V. F., S. Jagabathula, D. Shah (2013) A nonparametric approach to modeling choice with limited data1.00053100%
9Ragain, S., J. Ugander (2016) Pairwise choice markov chains0.92843100%
10Chen, Y., V. Misic (2019) Decision forest: A nonparametric approach to modeling irrational choice0.87452100%

Showing the top 10 of 49 scored citations.