Retail shelf management means cost-efficiently aligning retail operations with consumer demand.
As consumers expect high product availability and low prices and retailers are constantly
increasing product variety and striving towards high service levels the complexity of managing
retail business and its operations is growing enormously. Retailers need to match consumer
demand with shelf supply by balancing variety (number of products) and service levels (number
of items of a product) and by optimizing demand and profit through carefully calibrated
prices. As a result the core strategic decisions a retailer must make involve assortment sizes
shelf space assignment and pricing levels. Rigorous quantitative methods have emerged as the
most promising solution to this problem. The individual chapters in this book therefore focus
on three areas: (1) combining assortment and shelf space planning (2) providing efficient
decision support systems for practically relevant problem sizes and (3) integrating inventory
and price optimization into shelf management.
