ICARUS: intelligent coupon allocation for retailers using search

Author

Swift, Stephen ; Shi, Amy ; Crampton, Jason ; Tucker, Allan

Author_Institution

Sch. of Inf. Syst., Comput. & Math., Brunel Univ., Uxbridge

Volume

1

fYear

2005

fDate

5-5 Sept. 2005

Firstpage

182

Abstract

Many retailers run loyalty card schemes for their customers offering incentives in the form of money off coupons. The total value of the coupons depends on how much the customer has spent. This paper deals with the problem of finding the smallest set of coupons such that each possible total can be represented as the sum of a pre-defined number of coupons. A mathematical analysis of the problem leads to the development of a genetic algorithm solution. The algorithm is applied to real world data using several crossover operators and compared to well known straw-person methods. Results are promising showing that considerable time can be saved by using this method, reducing a few days worth of consultancy time to a few minutes of computation

Keywords

customer services; genetic algorithms; mathematical analysis; retail data processing; search problems; ICARUS; crossover operators; genetic algorithm; intelligent coupon allocation; loyalty card schemes; mathematical analysis; money off coupons; retailers; straw-person methods; Appraisal; Consumer behavior; Genetic algorithms; Information security; Information systems; Investments; Logic; Marketing and sales; Mathematical analysis; Mathematics;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Evolutionary Computation, 2005. The 2005 IEEE Congress on

Conference_Location

Edinburgh, Scotland

Print_ISBN

0-7803-9363-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CEC.2005.1554683

Filename

1554683