arXiv:2607.13314cs.LGcs.AI2026-07

用表格基础模型提升消费者选择预测,速度更快精度更高。

Tabular Foundation Models for Discrete Choice Estimation

  • 将选择集依赖和个体差异融入行级学习框架
  • 在中等数据量下准确率超贝叶斯方法,快16倍
  • 适合数据少的用户,尤其适合大规模需求估计

表格基础模型(TFMs)通过上下文学习在结构化数据上生成预测,无需任务特定估计。我们探究其在离散选择建模中的适用性,发现直接应用效果有限。根源在于TFMs假设行间独立,而离散选择具有集合属性且存在持续的消费者偏好异质性。为此,我们提出一种重构方法,在行级学习框架内编码选择集依赖与个体异质性。在酸奶扫描面板数据上评估,个体异质性编码是预测准确性的主要驱动因素。最优重构方案在保留样本对数似然和命中率上优于分层贝叶斯估计,且运行速度提升16倍,对大规模需求估计具有实用优势。该优势在中等数据规模(每消费者10–40次购买)最显著,此时参数贝叶斯收缩会严重扭曲异常消费者估计。对群体选择数据进行微调,可进一步提升购买历史短的消费者表现,因上下文学习难以捕捉其个体信号。结果为将基础模型应用于更广泛的消费者选择问题提供了系统性方法。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Tabular foundation models (TFMs) generate predictions on structured data via in-context learning, without task-specific estimation. We ask whether TFMs can be effectively applied to discrete choice, a central demand estimation framework in marketing and operations, and find that directly applying TFMs yields limited performance. The gap is structural: TFMs assume row-independent observations, whereas discrete choice is inherently set-valued and subject to persistent consumer preference heterogeneity. We propose a reformulation that encodes both choice-set dependence and individual heterogeneity within a row-based learning framework. Evaluated on a yogurt scanner panel, individual-level heterogeneity encoding is the dominant driver of predictive accuracy. The best reformulation outperforms hierarchical Bayesian estimation on both holdout log-likelihood and hit rate, running 16 times faster, a practical advantage for large-scale demand estimation. The advantage is largest in the medium-data regime (10--40 purchase occasions per consumer), where parametric Bayesian shrinkage most distorts estimates for atypical consumers. Fine-tuning on population choice data provides additional gains for consumers with shallow purchase histories, where in-context learning has limited individual-specific signal to condition on. These results establish a principled approach for applying foundation models to consumer choice problems more broadly.

离散选择基础模型需求估计个性化推荐

Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。