A tool for the puschasing decisions making from suppliers and the pre-sales satisfaction in an online sales campaing

Abstract

We conduct a study of an outlet company decision problem that occurs when the company launches an online sales campaign. At the end of the campaign, the company has to decide which presales to customers are satisfied and which purchase orders are issued to its suppliers. The goal is to find the best trade-off between profit and number of presales that are not satisfied. At present, the company solves this problem manually. We model and solve the problem with an integer linear programming model. We show that the model is a useful tool for the decision maker to calculate different optimal trade-offs that are compared in order to obtain a more suitable solution. Moreover, we illustrate how this tool can be easily adapted for other type of campaigns and companies. The company considers that the obtained results are satisfactory. Additionally, a computational study is carried out and results demonstrate that the tool is very efficient for solving even much bigger campaigns.