Questions about AI running retail stores

[kg79]

Hello!
I always have trouble when I let the AI run my retail stores, either I have a COO to do do this or the CEO of a subsidiary. I choose for such objectives always people who are good at retailing and training. But they always mess up the stores and turn a huge profit to just a small one or even into minus. I figured out that the reasons are often the following:

- They change the products too often and trash the remaining inventory generating huge write offs. A product needs some time until it's bought, the AI seems not to have the needed patience.
- They order same products already sold in additional units when it's not needed, even if supply is much higher than demand. On the other hand they often do not do this if demand is higher than supply AND the source of the product is able to deliver more.

Both can't make the stores to generate profits. If I tweak it by hand or take over the shop and micro manage it, I run very quickly into profits and have always balanced supply/demand. I know I can set up management policies and tell them to not look for new products etc, but there is always a point where I don't want to micromanage every store. So how do you deal with that?

Edit:
Just an example: the OOO or CEO has the policy to maximize the market share (slider totaly to right). There is competition and the they are selling the product at a better score. But the COO wants to sell the product for a incredibly high margin (tripple price...) with the result that no one buys it, especially when the product is new in the store. When I take over the score I would just need some days to sell the product like hot cakes.

Maybe some new policies would help like to force prices both at production and retail level for particular products, in the view where you can overwrite the general profit setting for selected products. I would appreciate such a possibility, as well as a checkbox to allow temporary discounts. Another policy could be to forbid trashing of old products when purchasing new ones: the remaining stock should be first sold out with discount, preventing write offs.

Another great policy for the CEO/COO could be to force him to target a market either via price, quality, brand, or balanced. So you could sell in a department store rather goods with high brand / quality and in discount stores goods with a good price where also the consumer focus is more on the price.

[CapitalismLabStory]

I never get the COO policies. I now lean to keeping it halfway between balanced and the left (I believe profit). I kept it at profit and some products end up not selling at all because the COO decided to sell it at such high margin like crazy high. But for other products my profit did go high. When I put all market share my COO was selling things at cost and I was losing money. When I put balanced it was like dude making up his own mind.

Now I just set prices on bulk in the product page and rarely sell things not my own. I often forget to change the price as my product improve but that has only helped me capture the market share properly lol

I would love to see something better on how COO works and how to set a thing of how much market share or how much profit margin is allowed because otherwise it's a mess at times. Don't even get me started in research which I mistakenly handed over to the COO making me lose like year or two of progress dude was researching stuff I was never going into...