Essays On Joint Optimization Of Pricing And Capacity Decisions With CustomerBehavior Modelling.

Customer Behavior Modelling;Advance Selling;Economics;Business;Business Administration

Yu, ManEtzion, Hila ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Customer Behavior Modelling;    Advance Selling;    Economics;    Business;    Business Administration;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/77692/manyu_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

My dissertation is about joint optimization of firms;; operations and marketing decisions with explicit modelling of customer behavior. It includes three essays:The first essay, ``Advance Selling -- The Effect of Capacity andConsumer Valuation Interdependence,;;;; considers a seller who canoffer a product twice, in advance and in spot markets. Customersstrategically choose when to purchase the product. Customers;;valuations may be inter-dependent and the seller decides onwhether, when, and how to sell in advance. I show that customervaluation interdependence dramatically influences firms;; strategy.For example, when customers;; preferences are diverse, firmstypically quote discounted price, but may limit the capacityavailable in advance. In contrast, when customers;; preferences arehighly correlated, firms with limited capacity can charge premiumprice in advance.The second essay, ``Rationing Capacity in Advance to SignalQuality,;;;; extends the analysis of advance selling to incorporateasymmetric information regarding product quality: firms usuallyhave better information about products;; quality in advance thancustomers do. I characterize firms;; strategy in equilibrium andfind that the asymmetry in information always hurts high-qualityfirms. These firms need to sacrifice some of their potentialprofit, by lowering price and/or limiting capacity in advance, tosignal to customers their high quality.The third essay, ``Demand Shaping and Product Overselling toBetter Match Supply and Demand for Assemble-to-Order Firms,;;;;focuses on jointly producing and marketing multiple products forassemble-to-order firms, where assembly of final products occursonly after demand arrives and takes negligible time. The keyquestion is how to match final product demand with limited on-handcomponent inventory. By incorporating customers;; price-baseddemand substitution into firms;; decisions, I propose two controlstrategies, demand shaping and product overselling. I characterizethe optimal pricing and order-acceptance policies, and evaluatethe benefits of these two strategies both individually andjointly.