Learning to Price Bundles: A GCN Approach for Mixed Bundling

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Ding, Liangyu, Wu, Chenghan, Li, Guokai, Wang, Zizhuo
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Ding, Liangyu
Wu, Chenghan
Li, Guokai
Wang, Zizhuo
author_facet Ding, Liangyu
Wu, Chenghan
Li, Guokai
Wang, Zizhuo
contents Bundle pricing refers to designing several product combinations (i.e., bundles) and determining their prices in order to maximize the expected profit. It is a classic problem in revenue management and arises in many industries, such as e-commerce, tourism, and video games. However, the problem is typically intractable due to the exponential number of candidate bundles. In this paper, we explore the usage of graph convolutional networks (GCNs) in solving the bundle pricing problem. Specifically, we first develop a graph representation of the mixed bundling model (where every possible bundle is assigned with a specific price) and then train a GCN to learn the latent patterns of optimal bundles. Based on the trained GCN, we propose two inference strategies to derive high-quality feasible solutions. A local-search technique is further proposed to improve the solution quality. Numerical experiments validate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed GCN-based framework. Using a GCN trained on instances with 5 products, our methods consistently achieve near-optimal solutions (better than 97%) with only a fraction of computational time for problems of small to medium size. It also achieves superior solutions for larger size of problems compared with other heuristic methods such as bundle size pricing (BSP). The method can also provide high quality solutions for instances with more than 30 products even for the challenging cases where product utilities are non-additive.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_22557
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Learning to Price Bundles: A GCN Approach for Mixed Bundling
Ding, Liangyu
Wu, Chenghan
Li, Guokai
Wang, Zizhuo
Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
Bundle pricing refers to designing several product combinations (i.e., bundles) and determining their prices in order to maximize the expected profit. It is a classic problem in revenue management and arises in many industries, such as e-commerce, tourism, and video games. However, the problem is typically intractable due to the exponential number of candidate bundles. In this paper, we explore the usage of graph convolutional networks (GCNs) in solving the bundle pricing problem. Specifically, we first develop a graph representation of the mixed bundling model (where every possible bundle is assigned with a specific price) and then train a GCN to learn the latent patterns of optimal bundles. Based on the trained GCN, we propose two inference strategies to derive high-quality feasible solutions. A local-search technique is further proposed to improve the solution quality. Numerical experiments validate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed GCN-based framework. Using a GCN trained on instances with 5 products, our methods consistently achieve near-optimal solutions (better than 97%) with only a fraction of computational time for problems of small to medium size. It also achieves superior solutions for larger size of problems compared with other heuristic methods such as bundle size pricing (BSP). The method can also provide high quality solutions for instances with more than 30 products even for the challenging cases where product utilities are non-additive.
title Learning to Price Bundles: A GCN Approach for Mixed Bundling
topic Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.22557