Offline Feature-Based Pricing Under Censored Demand: A Causal Inference Approach

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Tang, Jingwen; Qi, Zhengling; Fang, Ethan; Shi, Cong
• 署名单位: University of Miami; George Washington University; Duke University
• 刊物名称: M&SOM-MANUFACTURING & SERVICE OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1523-4614
• DOI: 10.1287/msom.2024.1061
• 发表日期: 2025
• 关键词: Offline Learning; feature-based pricing; demand censoring; Causal Inference; Regret Analysis

摘要

Problem definition: We study a feature-based pricing problem with demand censoring in an offline, data-driven setting. In this problem, a firm is endowed with a finite amount of inventory and faces a random demand that is dependent on the offered price and the features (from products, customers, or both). Any unsatisfied demand that exceeds the inventory level is lost and unobservable. The firm does not know the demand function but has access to an offline data set consisting of quadruplets of historical features, inventory, price, and potentially censored sales quantity. Our objective is to use the offline data set to find the optimal feature-based pricing rule so as to maximize the expected profit. Methodology/results: Through the lens of causal inference, we propose a novel data driven algorithm that is motivated by survival analysis and doubly robust estimation. derive a finite sample regret bound to justify the proposed offline learning algorithm prove its robustness. Numerical experiments demonstrate the robust performance of proposed algorithm in accurately estimating optimal prices on both training and testing data. Managerial implications: The work provides practitioners with an innovative modeling and algorithmic framework for the feature-based pricing problem with demand censoring through the lens of causal inference. Our numerical experiments underscore value of considering demand censoring in the context of feature-based pricing.