Sharif Digital Repository

Consider a production system with a single product which is demanded by n different customer classes and each customer class has a Poisson demand with rate of λ_i for class i customer class. The important note is that different customer classes have different values for the system and they have different lost sales cost for the system. Therefore, the optimal decision is not necessarily satisfying the customer which arrived sooner. The main idea in this thesis is that for this problem which needs rationing in stock out situations, we can use pricing in line with rationing.
First, we have formulated the problem for the case of two customer classes and two available prices. We formulated... 

This research deals with the problem of dynamic pricing of perishable assets. In this problem there are two sources of randomness: the arrival rate of customers and their reservation prices. In most studies considering this problem, it’s assumed that process of arrivals of customers follows a Poisson process with a given intensity. Thus this process is assumed to have independent increments and the information regarding the arrival times of previous customers doesn’t have any influence on the distribution of arrival times of future customers. In some recent studies it’s assumed that customers’ arrivals follow a conditional Poisson process with an unknown intensity. The distribution of this... 

The problem of developing optimal pricing and inventory allocation strategies has been extensively studied over the past two decades. However, most of the literature in this area assumes that customers are myopic price-takers, and do not respond to firm pricing strategically. In this study, we present review on a class of problems that consider a firm selling a finite number of items over a finite time horizon facing stochastic demand and a group of customers who act strategically by timing their purchases. We first review the optimal purchasing policy for the customers, and pricing policy for the firm that is the best response policy to the customer’s strategic behavior. Then we present a... 

Seasonal Products are a group of products with a limited life time. If seasonal products are not sold during a specified time, they have to be sold at a salvage price which is close to zero. Although one can find many studies in the literature regarding pricing of this type of products in order to maximize the profit, none of them have considered the simultaneous effect of both advertising and pricing. The objective of this paper is to introduce an integrated model of dynamic pricing and advertising for seasonal products. The advertisement is classified into two main categories; to advertise a specific type of product and to advertise the brand of the company. To obtain the mentioned goal,... 

In this investigation, two pricing models are extended with continuous and periodic price settings through dynamic programming approach. In this problem, we intend to sell a perishable product in a finite horizon with no salvage value through an advance-sale system. The objective function in these models is maximizing expected value of firms’ revenue by setting optimal prices in pricing periods. Demand is assumed to be stochastic time and price-dependent and also customers might cancel their reservations by paying a penalty before delivery. Structural properties of the optimal policy are investigated for both models and the concavity and inventory monotonicity properties are proved for both.... 

In this research a monopolist is considered which its object is maximization of profit during a predetermined period. Optimal control theory is used as a tool for determining of optimal trend for control variables. Price, warranty length and production rate are considered as control variables and cumulative demand and production are considered as state variables. Learning effect in production side and demand side are entered in the model too. In the demand side, learning effect shows its influences with movement of market from diffusion phase to saturation phase. In diffusion phase the demanded quantity of productions increases by increase of cumulative demand, on the contrary in the... 

This study frames optimal policies for determining price , warranty length and Advertisement rate when free replacement of defective items is the business policy and the demand is dependent on price, warranty, advertisement and cumulative sales for high-tech products which have functional aspects. We apply optimal control theory to a profit-maximization model that takes into consideration the expected warranty cost per item. The maximization of market values is based upon a pre-determined life cycle and spans across both expansion and saturation phases of the market. We further investigate the optimal policies for an exponential lifetime distribution, when the demand function is set by... 

In this study vendor-managed inventory policy in supply chains is investigated and a formulation is developed to optimize replenishments from vendor to retailer and also price for negotiator customers. As a result, we consider a two echelon supply chain containing a vendor and a retailer managed according to VMI policy. The goal is to find the optimal replenishment from vendor to retailer at the beginning of the month and by using dynamic programming approach to maximize the supply chain profit. Demand is nondeterministic and it is supposed Poisson distribution with unknown parameter. We will consider Gamma distribution for this parameter which its parameters are learning in dynamic... 

With the growth and success of applications like Uber using the sharing economy concept in order to create value, many firms try to run businesses with similar ideas. Assisting such businesses to be created and grew, we present an analysis of Uber’s operation in this thesis. In addition, factors affecting supply and demand function for travel-matching applications are perceived with Tap30’s dataset and the mismatch between these functions in some areas and times is recognized as Tap30’s current problem. To address this problem, a mechanism is designed to adjust supply function with the demand in order to increase the number of customer-driver matching in the system. To design a mechanism, a... 

This thesis studies optimal pricing policy of a firm selling perishable products in a retail store facing stochastic arrival of customers whom may ask for a bargain. With the tremendous growth of the internet and online sale channels, the ability of customers to get detailed information about previous sales creates an expectation for reasonable price of product in customers' opinion called reference price which has great impacts on their willingness to pay. In this work, we address the problem of determining a pricing strategy considering reference price effects in addition to customers' negotiation ability. We use dynamic programming to model retailer's problem, which considering reference... 

Last decade witnessed a virtual explosion of information about customers and their priorities. This information gives some potentials to companies that increase their revenues, especially when new technologies make the possibility of changing prices with low costs. Simultaneously, companies had large development in dynamic management of supply chain in both internal operations of companies and their communications. Although pricing decisions have some effects on operations, but integration of operations and marketing are very common subjects in science and business. In this thesis, we consider the integration of dynamic pricing and ordering in a supply chain. Then, we present a dynamic... 

In this thesis, an approach is developed to obtain an optimal pricing policy for chartered flights. In order to do so, a model within the framework of dynamic programming is presented and its main structure is also analyzed. Since in real world cases the dimension of this model happens to be very large, a solution method is developed by “Q Learning” technique. This is an appropriate approach in approximate dynamic programming and reinforcement learning. Analysis is carried out under two different assumptions regarding demand, namely “linear-deterministic” and probabilistic demand for transition probabilities. An exact solution for deterministic demand case is developed. Furthermore, for... 

Taking into account the impact of advertising on the reference price, we propose an optimal pricing strategy for supply chains in competitive industries subject to reference price effect. Most of researches do not consider the competition among supply chains. An industry with two competing supply chains is considered. Each supply chain includes a manufacturer who sells his/her product via a retailer. There are two types of structures: integrated and decentralized (it is assumed that the relation in a chain is Manufacturer– Stackelberg). Each manufacturer offers wholesale price to his/her retailer anticipating the retailer’s order quantity. In addition, the retailers choose their retail... 

This research aims to develop and propose mathematical models that can be used to facilitate cross-functional coordination between operations and marketing. The researcher has developed a dynamic model for integrating pricing and production decisions of substitutable products in order to maximize the profit of manufacturer in multi periods. The substitution is price-driven, customer-driven and both one-way and two-way directions are considered in two different models. Demand functions are linear, determined and a function of all prices. Due to the existence of substitution between products, the price elasticity is always positive and this parameter is used as a measure of substitution in... 

The present study investigates dynamic pricing in case of urban transportation operators competing on an identical network. Game theory has been adopted as an approach to the modeling and solutions.Game theory is a mathematical theory widely applied in competitive situations.The proposed model takes the players’ interdependency problems into account to predict their decisions as well as the displacement on the network about equilibrium point. The problem is modeled in no-cooperation state using the dynamic Nash equilibrium; Gauss-Seidel algorithm is used for the solutions considering the discontinuity of the decision space. A comprehensive sensitivity analysis has also been conducted on the... 

This paper studies sub game perfect Nash equilibrium of a price competition in an oligopoly market with perishable assets. Sellers each has one unit of a good that cannot be replenished, and they compete in setting prices to sell their good over a finite sales horizon. Buyers each demand one unit of the good in each period and the number of buyers coming to the market in each period is random. All sellers’ prices are accessible for buyers, and search is costless. Using stochastic dynamic programming methods, the best response of sellers can be obtained from a one-shot price competition game regarding remained periods and the current-time demand structure. Assuming a binary demand model, we...