Visiting Professor from Jiangsu University receives research grant

09 September 2015

Shaohui Ma, a visitor to the Centre from the School of Economics and Management, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, has successfully applied for a research grant from the Chinese National Science Foundation. He will work with Robert Fildes on the topic of “Demand forecasting and promotion optimization at SKU level in FMCG retailing”.

The proposed research includes developing methods at SKU level for different hierarchies in a large scale retailing chain, while considering various influential factors including price, promotion, seasonality, area, product attributes, data and computer processing, according to the characteristics of SKU level sales data in various stores. The project further aims to build a large scale chain wide SKU level promotion optimization model, which provide optimal promotion timing, depth, mode and update timing to maximize category or store level profit taking into account certain business practicalities.

Any retailer interested in collaborating on the project which will include a confidential analysis of their data should contact Robert on r.fildes@lancaster.ac.uk.