ArticleOpen Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/acc.2026.06.007
Research on the Optimization Strategy of Retail Enterprise Product Portfolio Based on Association Rule Analysis
Chengfeng Jin
Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
*Corresponding author: Chengfeng Jin
Published: June 24, 2026
Abstract
The management of product mix in retail enterprises is shifting from individual product performance evaluation to basket relationship identification. The traditional selection method relying on sales volume, gross profit margin, and inventory turnover is unable to capture the complementary purchasing, scenario complementarity, and implicit collaborative value among products. By leveraging data such as transaction orders, product codes, purchase time periods, and promotion statuses, and using association rule analysis to extract support, confidence, and lift indicators, core driving, collaborative supplementary, and weakly collaborative redundant products can be identified, and combined imbalance issues such as high sales but low association, low sales but high association, and inventory mismatch can be further discovered. Based on this, optimization designs are carried out around scenario-based product matrices, shelf adjacency, combined promotions, and inventory linkage, and pilot store comparison data are introduced for verification. The results show that after optimization, average transaction value, association rate, and the proportion of combined product sales have improved, while the proportion of inefficient SKUs and the shortage rate of associated products have decreased simultaneously. This provides an operational path for retail enterprises to improve the accuracy of product mix decision-making and the level of operational resource allocation.
Keyword
Retail enterprises; product mix optimization; association rule analysis; basket analysis
References
[1] Saccomanno PF, Trivella A, Guerriero F. Integrated sales planning for in-store retail: a multi-stage stochastic optimization approach. Eur J Oper Res. 2026;329(2):669-686.
[2] Batsakis G, Konara P, Theoharakis V. Digital sales channels and the relationship between product and international diversification: evidence from going digital retail MNEs. Glob Strateg J. 2022;13(4):830-856.
[3] Xi Z, Pinliang L. Hybrid platform operation decision of retail enterprises. J Theor Appl Electron Commer Res. 2022;17(2):809-835.
[4] Vidya M, JDT, Saurabh B. Estimating substitution and basket effects in retail stores: implications for assortment planning. Manage Sci. 2021.
[5] Alibeiki H, Li S, Vaidyanathan R. Market dominance or product cost advantage: retail power impacts on assortment decisions. Int J Prod Econ. 2020;222:107505.
[6] Pérez-Campdesuñer R, Sánchez-Rodríguez A, García-Vidal G, et al. Influence of the structure of product portfolio performance in a small business retail. Int J Bus Soc Res. 2020;10(1):23-34.
[7] Hoskins DJ. The evolving role of hit and niche products in brick-and-mortar retail category assortment planning: a large-scale empirical investigation of U.S. consumer packaged goods. J Retail Consum Serv. 2020;57.
[8] Ahmadi DN, Nikabadi SM, Kafaki SB. Optimization of knowledge transferring costs in designing product portfolio: a fuzzy binary linear programming model. VINE J Inf Knowl Manag Syst. 2020;52(1):18-32.
[9] Goli A, Zare KH, Tavakkoli-Moghaddam R, et al. Hybrid artificial intelligence and robust optimization for a multi-objective product portfolio problem case study: the dairy products industry. Comput Ind Eng. 2019;137(C):106090.
Copyright
© 2026 by the author(s).
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not modified or adapted.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
How to cite this paper
Research on the Optimization Strategy of Retail Enterprise Product Portfolio Based on Association Rule Analysis
How to cite this paper: Chengfeng Jin. (2026) Research on the Optimization Strategy of Retail Enterprise Product Portfolio Based on Association Rule Analysis. Advances in Computer and Communication, 7(2), 96-100.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/acc.2026.06.007