Modern column generation for estimating single- and multi-purchase ranked list choice models

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Costa, Luciano, Berbeglia, Gerardo, Contardo, Claudio, Cordeau, Jean-François
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Costa, Luciano
Berbeglia, Gerardo
Contardo, Claudio
Cordeau, Jean-François
author_facet Costa, Luciano
Berbeglia, Gerardo
Contardo, Claudio
Cordeau, Jean-François
contents This paper studies the estimation of ranked-list discrete choice models with single and multiple purchases. In this setting, each consumer type is characterized by a ranking over a subset of products and a desired number of purchases, and the estimation task is to identify the set of consumer types and their probabilities that best explain the observed transactional data. This problem is computationally challenging due to the exponential number of possible consumer types and becomes more difficult when multiple purchases are allowed. We propose a column generation framework for this problem. Our main contribution is a dynamic programming algorithm for the column generation subproblem. This subproblem generalizes the linear ordering problem and incorporates acceleration techniques to improve computational efficiency. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first dynamic programming-based approach for generating consumer types in non-parametric models. The proposed framework supports multiple model variants with minor modifications. Computational experiments on synthetic and real data show substantial speedups over existing methods while maintaining high solution quality, and demonstrate effectiveness in both estimation and assortment optimization.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_06948
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Modern column generation for estimating single- and multi-purchase ranked list choice models
Costa, Luciano
Berbeglia, Gerardo
Contardo, Claudio
Cordeau, Jean-François
Data Structures and Algorithms
90C27 (primary), 90C39, 68Q25, 90B50
G.1.6; F.2.2
This paper studies the estimation of ranked-list discrete choice models with single and multiple purchases. In this setting, each consumer type is characterized by a ranking over a subset of products and a desired number of purchases, and the estimation task is to identify the set of consumer types and their probabilities that best explain the observed transactional data. This problem is computationally challenging due to the exponential number of possible consumer types and becomes more difficult when multiple purchases are allowed. We propose a column generation framework for this problem. Our main contribution is a dynamic programming algorithm for the column generation subproblem. This subproblem generalizes the linear ordering problem and incorporates acceleration techniques to improve computational efficiency. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first dynamic programming-based approach for generating consumer types in non-parametric models. The proposed framework supports multiple model variants with minor modifications. Computational experiments on synthetic and real data show substantial speedups over existing methods while maintaining high solution quality, and demonstrate effectiveness in both estimation and assortment optimization.
title Modern column generation for estimating single- and multi-purchase ranked list choice models
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
90C27 (primary), 90C39, 68Q25, 90B50
G.1.6; F.2.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.06948