Category Inventory Planning With Service Level Requirements and Dynamic Substitutions

Abstract

We study a single‐period inventory planning problem for a category of substitutable products. This is an important practical problem facing category managers who have to maintain high service levels for constantly expanding product catalogs. We formulate the problem as a stochastic optimization model that minimizes the total stocking cost subject to service level requirements, which consist of product‐specific and category‐wide targets for inventory availability (ready rates) through the selling season. Our model accounts for stochastic customer arrivals, captures stockout‐based substitutions, and determines initial stocking quantities jointly for all products. Recognizing the challenges tha..