Objective Function

In the marketing optimization problem, the objective function is an aggregate measure of the customer-communication assignments. Equivalently, it is a mathematical expression in terms of the decision variables that is to be either minimized or maximized.

The application imposes a mathematical requirement that any aggregate measure of the assignments that represents the objective function must be linear. That is, for a given customer and a given communication (offer type), there is a pre-specified fixed value so that if the customer receives the offer, then this assignment contributes the pre-specified fixed amount to the objective. If the customer does not receive the offer, the contribution to the objective is 0. Furthermore, the contribution to the objective for a specific assignment must be independent of all other assignments.