Supply chain interactions due to store-brand introductions: The impact of retail competition

Store-brand products are of increasing importance in retailing, often causing channel conflict as they compete with national brands. Focusing on the interactions that arise in single-manufacturer single-retailer settings, previous research suggests that one main driver of store-brand profitability to the retailer is that it leads to a reduction of the national-brand wholesale price. Under retail competition, the Robinson Patman Act then introduces an interesting trade-off: A retailer that introduces a store brand incurs the associated costs and risks, while sharing this benefit with its competition. We show that the resulting interactions can cause retailers to play “chicken”, either of them preferring a store-brand introduction by the competitor. Such interactions do not arise in channels with a single retailer, as has been the object of most previous research, and we show that some of the key insights derived from single-retailer models fail to hold when retailers compete. We conduct a numeric study, and our findings suggest that retailers are more likely to randomize their store-brand introduction strategies when customers have strong store preferences, and when the retailers’ store-brand products are similar to the national-brand product in terms of customer valuations and production cost.     

Pricing peer-produced services: Quality,capacity, and competition issues

Peer production has played an important role in the economics of Web 2.0 related services in which user participation and contribution become the main driving dynamics. However, the quality of peer-produced services is uncertain because of inherently decentralized and heterogeneous participants. In the paper, utilizing reliability and game theoretic models, we develop a QoS measure and pricing schemes for this emerging type of service under various market structures. Our results suggest that a monopolistic platform provider has no incentive to offer multiple quality classes of service. Two competing platform providers may offer identical service contracts but still receive non-negative profit. If they offer heterogeneous service contracts, the provider with the lower quality service may provide higher quality than he advertises. This research contributes to the literature with a number of unique and interesting implications for the issues of service contract design, capacity planning, and market interactions for operations of community-based or peer-produced services.     

An application of cooperative game among container terminals of one port

In this paper a two-stage game that involves three container terminals located in Karachi Port in Pakistan is discussed. In the first stage, the three terminals have to decide on whether to act as a singleton or to enter into a coalition with one or both of the other terminals. The decision at this stage should presumably be based on the predicted outcome for the second stage. The second stage is here modelled as a Bertrand game with one outside competitor, the coalition and the terminal in Karachi Port (if any) that has not joined the coalition. Furthermore, three partial and one grand coalition among the three terminals at Karachi Port are investigated. The concepts of “characteristic function” and “core” are used to analyse the stability of these coalitions and this revealed that one combination does not satisfy the superadditivity property of the characteristic function and can therefore be ruled out. The resulting payoffs (profits) of these coalitions are analysed on the basis of “core”. The best payoff for all players is in the case of a “grand coalition”. However, the real winner is the outsider (the terminal at the second port) which earns a better payoff without joining the coalition, and hence will play the role of the “orthogonal free-rider”.     

The implications of costs, capacity, and competition on product line selection

We consider a situation in which a manufacturer has to select the product(s) to sell as well as the selling price and production quantity of each selected product. There are two substitutable products in the consideration set, where product 2 has a higher quality and reservation price than that of product 1. By considering the cannibalization effect that depends on the selling price of each product, the manufacturer needs to evaluate the profit function associated with three different product line options: sell both products or only one of the 2 products. In order to examine the impact of costs, capacity, and competition on the optimal product line selection, optimal price, and optimal production quantity analytically, we present a stylized model in this paper so that we can determine the conditions under which a particular option is optimal.     

具有连续系数的竞争扩散方程组的周期解(英文)

本文讨论了一类变系数的竞争扩散方程组,其中系数关于空间和时间变元连续,而关于时间变元是周期的.通过构造上下解,运用单调迭代方法证明了带Neumann边界条件的竞争扩散方程组正周期解的存在性和唯一性.     

Highly nonlinear large-competition limits of elliptic systems

This article is concerned with the effect of different types of competitive interaction terms on the large-interaction limit of nonlinear elliptic systems modelling the steady states of populations that compete in some region. As the competition rate tends to infinity, we show that non-negative solutions of quite simple-looking systems converge to the positive and negative parts of a solution of a scalar limit problem which may be much more strongly nonlinear than the original system, possibly with quadratic growth in the gradient of the limit function.     

第14届亚洲物理奥林匹克竞赛实验试题与中国队学生实验能力分析

介绍了第14届亚洲物理奥林匹克竞赛实验试题,并针对参赛学生在竞赛中的失分情况分析了竞赛评分规则,指出了实验数据处理方法中的重点和存在的问题。     

Discrete-time Metapopulation Dynamics and Unidirectional Dispersal

The effects of unidirectional dispersal on single pioneer species discrete-time metapopulations where the pre-dispersal local patch dynamics are of the same (compensatory or overcompensatory) or mixed (compensatory and overcompensatory) types are studied. Single-species unidirectional metapopulation models behave as single-species single-patch models whenever all pre-dispersal local patch dynamics are compensatory and the dispersal rate is low. The pioneer species goes extinct in at least one patch when the dispersal rate is high, while it persists when the rate is low. Unidirectional dispersal can generate multiple attractors with fractal basin boundaries whenever the pre-dispersal local patch dynamics are overcompensatory, and is capable of altering the local patch dynamics in mixed systems from compensatory to overcompensatory dynamics and vice versa.     

Bifurcation of Lotka–Volterra competition model with nonlinear boundary conditions

In this paper, we discuss the bifurcation of semi-trivial solutions for the Lotka–Volterra competition model with nonlinear boundary conditions over a smooth bounded domain. Applying the Crandall–Rabinowitz local bifurcation theorem Crandall and Rabinowitz (1971) we prove the existence of a smooth curve bifurcating from the appropriate semi-trivial branch.