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Analysis of institutional authors

Munoz-Romero, SAuthorRojo-Alvarez, JlAuthor

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March 15, 2021
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Article

Causal Quantification of Cannibalization During Promotional Sales in Grocery Retail

Publicated to: Ieee Access. 9 34078-34089 - 2021-01-01 9(), DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3062222

Authors:

Aguilar-Palacios, Carlos; Munoz-Romero, Sergio; Rojo-Alvarez, Jose Luis
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Affiliations

Univ Politecn Madrid, Ctr Computat Simulat, Madrid 28040, Spain - Author
Univ Rey Juan Carlos, Dept Signal Theory & Commun Telemat & Comp Syst, Madrid 28933, Spain - Author

Abstract

In food and grocery retail, sales cannibalisation during promotions occurs when a promoted product has a knock-on effect on the sales of a non-promoted one. The quantification of its effect is important for retailers, as cannibalisation can lead to wasted food and lost profits. The performance of promotions is ultimately dependent on their features but also on the characteristics of the stores, i.e. type of store or its location. Generally speaking, there is no homogeneous response to a promotion, and by extension to sales cannibalisation. Accordingly, in this paper we describe a framework to analyse the effects of cannibalisation due to individual promotions based on the relationship amongst their sales. The novelty of our work resides in understanding cannibalisation as a causal effect where the increase in sales of the promoted product is partly due to the decrease in sales of the non-promoted one. As such, we propose to use causal inference to measure the impact of cannibalisation due to promotions. Our method reviews each product that has been on promotion, searching for potential cannibals, given by products whose promotion have resulted in large sales uplifts, and for the fall-outs, given by those products experiencing a reduction in sales due to the cannibals. Then each cannibal-victim pair is analysed with Causal Impact, a time-series method which allows one to infer the causal effect of an intervention. We demonstrate the practical application of detecting cannibalisation on vast datasets of promotions within several stores and their many departments. To provide with an overview of the cannibalisation for entire departments and not simply for individual products, we build a directed graph. This is both unique and of utmost value to store managers and marketing teams. Additionally, we discuss in the Appendix the application of explainable forecasting to cannibalisation on a surrogate model.
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Keywords

Causal inferenceCausal inferencesChemical contaminationDirected graphsHuman resource managementIndexesInterpretable machine learning (iml)Knock-on effectLarge salesLicensesMarket researchMarketing teamMeteorologyRetail promotionsSalesSales cannibalizationSupply chainSurrogate modelSwitchesTelematicsTime series analysisTime series method

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

The work has been published in the journal Ieee Access due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency Scopus (SJR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2021, it was in position , thus managing to position itself as a Q1 (Primer Cuartil), in the category Engineering (Miscellaneous).

Independientemente del impacto esperado determinado por el canal de difusión, es importante destacar el impacto real observado de la propia aportación.

Según las diferentes agencias de indexación, el número de citas acumuladas por esta publicación hasta la fecha 2025-12-21:

  • WoS: 1
  • Scopus: 8
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Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2025-12-21:

  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 78 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 3.

It is essential to present evidence supporting full alignment with institutional principles and guidelines on Open Science and the Conservation and Dissemination of Intellectual Heritage. A clear example of this is:

  • The work has been submitted to a journal whose editorial policy allows open Open Access publication.
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Leadership analysis of institutional authors

There is a significant leadership presence as some of the institution’s authors appear as the first or last signer, detailed as follows: Last Author (ROJO ÁLVAREZ, JOSÉ LUIS).

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Awards linked to the item

This work was supported in part by the Research Grants FINALE, and in part by the KERMES from Spanish Government under Grant TEC2016-75161-C2-1-R and Grant TEC2016-81900-REDT/AEI.
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