# Context-Based Dynamic Pricing with Online Clustering

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.06199 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.06199/

## Key facts

- Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 17 Feb 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Policy Optimization Using Semi-parametric Models for Dynamic Pricing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.06368/) (2021)
- [Doubly High-Dimensional Contextual Bandits: An Interpretable Model for Joint Assortment-Pricing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.08634/) (2023)
- [Fairness-aware Online Price Discrimination with Nonparametric Demand Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.08221/) (2021)
- [Data-pooling Reinforcement Learning for Personalized Healthcare Intervention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.08998/) (2022)
- [Pricing with Contextual Elasticity and Heteroscedastic Valuation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15999/) (2023)
- [Speed Up the Cold-Start Learning in Two-Sided Bandits with Many Arms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.00340/) (2022)
- [Utility Fairness in Contextual Dynamic Pricing with Demand Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16528/) (2023)
- [Dynamic Pricing in the Linear Valuation Model using Shape Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05776/) (2025)
- [Dynamic Pricing with Adversarially-Censored Demands](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06168/) (2025)
- [Collaborative Intelligence in Sequential Experiments: A Human-in-the-Loop Framework for Drug Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.03942/) (2024)
- [Revisiting Clustering of Neural Bandits: Selective Reinitialization for Mitigating Loss of Plasticity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.12389/) (2025)
- [DeepRule: An Integrated Framework for Automated Business Rule Generation via Deep Predictive Modeling and Hybrid Search Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03607/) (2025)
- [LLM-Inspired Pretrain-Then-Finetune for Small-Data, Large-Scale Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.03690/) (2026)
- [Nonparametric Learning and Earning with One-Point Feedback under Nonstationarity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.21263/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We consider a context-based dynamic pricing problem of online products, which have low sales. Sales data from Alibaba, a major global online retailer, illustrate the prevalence of low-sale products. For these products, existing single-product dynamic pricing algorithms do not work well due to insufficient data samples. To address this challenge, we propose pricing policies that concurrently perform clustering over product demand and set individual pricing decisions on the fly. By clustering data and identifying products that have similar demand patterns, we utilize sales data from products within the same cluster to improve demand estimation for better pricing decisions. We evaluate the algorithms using regret, and the result shows that when product demand functions come from multiple clusters, our algorithms significantly outperform traditional single-product pricing policies. Numerical experiments using a real dataset from Alibaba demonstrate that the proposed policies, compared with several benchmark policies, increase the revenue. The results show that online clustering is an effective approach to tackling dynamic pricing problems associated with low-sale products.
