A Note on the Assortment Problem

Wieslaw Sadowski [Sadowski, W. 1959. A few remarks on the assortment problem. Management Sci.6 (1, October).] has proposed a dynamic programming approach to the solution of the assortment problem by showing its equivalence to the shortest route problem and using Bellman's algorithm [Bellman, R. 1957. Dynamic Programming. Princeton, University Press, New Jersey.]. In this paper we offer an alternative solution which solves a slightly more general problem and prove a theorem which greatly reduces the amount of computation necessary to arrive at a solution.