Accurate demand estimation is crucial for the retail industry to guide inventory and pricing decisions for perishable items.
FreshRetailNet-50K is introduced as a significant benchmark dataset for censored demand estimation, containing 50,000 store-product time series with detailed hourly sales data and annotations for stockout events.
The dataset offers unique temporal granularity and contextual covariates like promotional discounts and weather, enabling innovative research in demand modeling and forecasting.
The two-stage demand modeling approach demonstrated with FreshRetailNet-50K shows improved prediction accuracy and reduction in systematic demand underestimation, paving the way for advancements in demand imputation and retail analytics.