Pricing strategies for perishable products: the case of Vienna and the hotel reservation system hrs.com

Consider a retailer who sells perishable products for which there is uncertain demand. Yield management with dynamic pricing is a standard practice that firms use for revenue management. For perishable products, recent analysis has focused on the distribution of flight capacity, referred to as ticket sales. Other non- storable, non-transportable, immaterial hospitality products include hotel capacity. The article discusses the extent to which hotel pricing strategies vary within the internet distribution system hrs.com. This study focuses on the distribution of hotel rooms available for booking on the internet for Vienna and gives an outlook to Euroland capitals. The main research interests are the underlying pricing models and the setting of the end price. Data was taken from hrs.com, which is the most important specialist for hotel room internet distribution in Germany according to recent studies by KMPG and others. The results include the identification of different pricing strategy clusters with regard to hotel category and hotel availability over a 22-day period for Vienna and one city from all Euroland countries (the capitals were studied for all cases except for the Netherlands, for which data was collected for Amsterdam). The study took the arrival days Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays into account, and used data for all these days from the 11th of July, 2005, to the 10th of October, 2005, for Vienna, and the first and the last of these dates as a comparison base for the other Euroland cities.     

A simultaneous multi-issue negotiation through autonomous agents

Automated negotiation through autonomous agents has become increasingly important since the advent of e-marketplace. A deadlock may arise in which both negotiators refuse to disclose more information; then, mediation is required. We propose an agent-based sealed-bid design in which both agents simultaneously submit their respective offers to the mediate agent, and construct an efficient negotiation strategy which can reach an agreement aiming to maximize their owner’s utility. An important contribution of this paper is that we consider negotiators not necessarily to conflict over all issues, such as quantity. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed automated negotiation strategy is efficient in terms of the Pareto-efficiency of the negotiated contracts, the joint utility obtained, and the equality of both agents. In addition, since disclosure of information is reduced greatly, the design can discourage counter-speculation and effectively control fraud and misrepresentation to a certain extent. The method we proposed is simple and stable in the context of a game and the model could be well suited for practical agent applications.     

Selecting optimal selling format of a product in B2C online auctions with boundedly rational customers

The advancement of Internet technology has enabled new formats for selling products in the B2C online auctions. At present, on the major online auction sites, there exist three popular selling formats, namely, the posted price, pure auction and buy-price auction formats. It is an important decision problem for a firm to select the most profitable format to sell its products through the Internet. The customer behavior is of course a crucial element of the decision process. To the best of our knowledge, most models available today assume that customers are perfectly rational. To better understand the decision process, in this paper, we incorporate the concept of bounded rationality into consideration. We first present a “behavior choice function” to characterize the behavior of the customers with bounded rationality. Then corresponding to each selling format, we construct a revenue model based on the bounded rationality for analysis. Finally, we conduct some elaborate computational experiments to investigate the performance of each revenue model for developing new managerial insights. Our computational results clearly demonstrate how the bounded rationality of customer behavior affects the choice of a preferable selling format for a B2C firm in an online auction.     

Dual-channel closed-loop supply chain with government consumption-subsidy

The government has been acting as an important role in the formation and operation of closed-loop supply chain. This paper focuses on how consumption-subsidy influences dual-channel closed-loop supply chain. After introducing government consumption-subsidy program and dual-channel closed-loop supply chain, the paper analyzes the channel members’ decisions before and after the government-funded program performance, respectively. Finally, influence of consumption-subsidy has been considered from the consumers, the scale of closed-loop supply chain and the enterprises perspectives, which provides an important basis for our propositions. The key propositions of the paper are listed as follows: All the consumers that purchase the new products are beneficiaries of the government consumption-subsidy in varying degrees; the consumption-subsidy is conducive to the expansion of closed-loop supply chain; both the manufacturer and the retailer are beneficiaries of the consumption-subsidy, while the e-tailer benefits or not is uncertain.     

Profitability of online order fulfillment in multi-channel retailing

Store-based retailers have been concerned about the high fulfillment costs and low gross margins of their online sales. This paper incorporates such issues in a non-linear mixed-integer profit maximization model of the online order fulfillment process for multi-channel retailers. A solution approach based on an iterative outer-approximation technique is developed. Using empirical data from a large U.S. retailer, the profitability of different options used by multi-channel retailers to fill online orders is evaluated. Managerial insights are developed through a factorial research design that highlights the effect of relevant logistics processes and fulfillment methods on the profitability of online sales for retailers.     

Dynamic pricing of multiple home delivery options

Online grocers accept delivery bookings and have to deliver groceries to consumers’ residences. Grocery stores operate on very thin margins. Therefore, a critical question that an online grocery store needs to address is the cost of home delivery operations. In this paper, we develop a Markov decision process-based pricing model that recognizes the need to balance utilization of delivery capacity by the grocer and the need to have the goods delivered at the most convenient time for the customer. The model dynamically adjusts delivery prices as customers arrive and make choices. The optimal prices have the following properties. First, the optimal prices are such that the online grocer gains the same expected payoff in the remaining booking horizon, regardless of the delivery option independently chosen by a consumer. Second, with unit order sizes, delivery prices can increase due to dynamic substitution effects as there is less time left in the booking horizon.     

Block order restrictions in combinatorial electric energy auctions

In Europe, the auctions organized by “power exchanges” one day ahead of delivery are multi-unit, double-sided, uniformly priced combinatorial auctions. Generators, retailers, large consumers and traders participate at the demand as well as at the supply side, depending or whether they are short or long in electric energy. Because generators face nonconvex costs, in particular startup costs and minimum run levels, the exchanges allow “block orders” that are all-or-nothing orders of a given amount of electric energy in multiple consecutive hours, while the standard order consists of an amount for a single hour that can be curtailed. All exchanges restrict the size (MWh/h), the type (span in terms of hours) or the number (per participant per day) of blocks that can be introduced. This paper discusses the rationale of block order restrictions. Based on simulations with representative scenarios, it is argued that the restrictions could be relaxed, which some exchanges have already started doing.     

电子商务障碍因素演化模型的研究与实证分析

障碍研究是电子商务应用研究的重要部分,目前国内此方面的研究仅限于定性分析,而对其的深入研究对于促进电子商务发展有明显的实用意义.着重研究了电子商务障碍因素测度的定量化和结构化分析问题,提出了障碍因素演化模型,以此将障碍因素影响测度定量化、动态化和结构化;提出了关于障碍因素的先导性假设,并基于国内流通领域数据,从实证分析对模型作了初步验证.     

A supply chain model with direct and retail channels

We study a dual channel supply chain in which a manufacturer sells to a retailer as well as to consumers directly. Consumers choose the purchase channel based on price and service qualities. The manufacturer decides the price of the direct channel and the retailer decides both price and order quantity. We develop conditions under which the manufacturer and the retailer share the market in equilibrium. We show that the difference in marginal costs of the two channels plays an important role in determining the existence of dual channels in equilibrium. We also show that demand variability has a major influence on the equilibrium prices and on the manufacturer’s motivation for opening a direct channel. In the case that the manufacturer and the retailer coordinate and follow a centralized decision maker, we show that adding a direct channel will increase the overall profit. Our numerical results show that an increase in retailer’s service quality may increase the manufacturer’s profit in dual channel and a larger range of consumer service sensitivity may benefit both parties in the dual channel. Our results suggest that the manufacturer is likely to be better off in the dual channel than in the single channel when the retailer’s marginal cost is high and the wholesale price, consumer valuation and the demand variability are low.     

The risk and information sharing of application services supply chain

We study an application services supply chain consisting of one application service provider (ASP) and one application infrastructure provider (AIP). The AIP supplies the computer capacity to the ASP that in turn sells the value-added application services to the market. The market is characterized by a price-sensitive random demand. The ASP’s objective is to determine the optimal price of its service to the market and the optimal capacity to purchase from the AIP. The AIP’s goal on the other hand is to maximize its profit from selling the capacity to the ASP.