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Li, Feng. "Optimal dynamic pricing for two perishable and substitutable products." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/9630.
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This thesis presents a dynamic pricing model where a seller offers two types of a generic product to a random number of customers. Customers show up sequentially. When a customer arrives, he will ---depending on the prices---either purchase one unit of type 1 product or one unit of type 2 product, or will leave empty-handed. The sale ends either when the entire stock is sold out, or when the customers are exhausted. The seller's task is to post the optimal prices for the two product types to each customer to maximize the expected total revenue. We use dynamic programming to formulate this problem, and derive the optimal policy for special cases. For general cases, we develop an algorithm to approximate the optimal policy and use numerical examples to demonstrate the efficiency of the algorithm.
Finally, we apply the results to a continuous-time model where customers arrive according to a Poisson process. We develop a heuristic policy and use numerical examples to show the heuristic policy is very effective.Master of Science
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Bitton, Joseph. "The development and merchandising of generic food products : implications of pricing and quality." Thesis, McGill University, 1985. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=64483.
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Nistor, Cristina (Cristina Daniela). "Three essays on product quality and pricing." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/77877.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
This dissertation consists of three essays on product quality and pricing. Essay 1: Pricing and Quality Provision in a Channel: A Model of Efficient Relational Contracts The first essay analyzes how quality concerns affect relationships in a channel. A firm concerned about uncontractible quality for a customizable good has to pay higher prices to sustain a relationship with the supplier. If the customizable good has very volatile demand, premium payments on this good cannot be sustained. Instead, the downstream firm pays a premium for a good with more stable demand that is correlated with demand for the customizable good. I use a novel dataset containing sales made by a wholesaler to Asian restaurants in the Southeastern United States to test this prediction empirically. As predicted by the proposed model, if customizable goods have very volatile demand, the high end restaurants do not pay a premium on those goods but instead pay a premium for other goods with more stable demand. Essay 2: Third Party Marketing Approvals The second essay measures the effect of competition in a certifier market. When customers purchase new products, there is often a degree of uncertainty about their quality. A common solution is to rely on a third-party certifier to provide some form of accreditation that signals quality. However, the incentives of a third-party certifier may not be completely benign. Competitive certification markets may lead the certifiers to provide unduly positive evaluations of quality to gain market share or provide unduly negative evaluations in order to gain credibility with end-users. This paper exploits an unusual natural experiment to evaluate the extent to which third-parties can be relied upon to correctly report product quality. It focuses on the FDA's decision to allow third parties to prepare certifications for certain medical devices, and observes how this decision to introduce competition at the reviewer stage has affected the quality of products allowed to go to market. There is evidence that allowing third party certification leads to significantly lower product quality. However, experience with using a third party reviewer in the past diminishes the negative effect of reviewer competition. Essay 3: Layaway and the Quasi-Endowment Effect of Installment Payments The third essay explores the quasi-endowment effect. The paper evaluates how much consumers are willing to prepay for a purchase which will be experienced in the future. In particular, the results indicate that prepaid installment plans allow the consumer to start deriving utility for the purchase from the moment of the first payment. This quasi-endowment effect is felt only for goods that are purchased for own consumption.
by Cristina Nistor.
Ph.D.
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Fredriksson, Henrik. "Husqvarna AB : a study on pricing and quality." Thesis, Internationella Handelshögskolan, Högskolan i Jönköping, IHH, Nationalekonomi, 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-14481.
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This thesis will compare and examine three different chainsaw models with re-spect to price, elasticity, price discrimination, product differentiation and durabili-ty. The three different saws are all aiming at different customer groups; hobby users, leisure users and professional users. The demands and needs of this groups differs a lot. The hobby users have the largest amount of different saws to choose from, this is a field with many different brands and the quality varies a lot, this implies that here is a fierce competition with respect to price. This indirect affects the elastic-ity and possibilities to price discriminate and product differentiation. I found that this model has the highest elasticity which is perfectly inline with the theory. Here is also a low possibility to price discriminate and the durability is the low-est. The other two models examined, the leisure and professional, are located in less competitive segments and from this follows that the professional model which has the smallest amount of competitors also has the lowest elasticity. Here was also the possibility to price discriminate the highest, durability the best and the product were viewed as differentiated.
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Ghavamzadeh, Sheida. "The impact of perceived product quality, service quality and transaction cost on the customer’s willingness to pay after a price increase." Thesis, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Institutionen för industriell ekonomi, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-19041.
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Objective: The objective of the study is to learn how the customer’s willingness pay after a price increase differs given different product conditions. Specifically, how it differs between high and low involvement products and hedonic and utilitarian products. The objective is also to understand what value drivers it is that affect the customers willingness to pay after a price increase. Methodology approach: An online survey was distributed through social media. The research study was conducted using multiple linear regression and one-way ANOVA using data from 270 participants. Research limitation: The survey used in the study uses scales that have been revised. This means that other important value dimensions that were a part of the original scales have been neglected. Results/conclusion: No significant difference was found between the different product groups. The variables; product quality, service quality were both found to have a positive impact on the outcome variable customer’s willingness to pay after a price increase. The variable transaction cost had on the other hand a negative impact on the outcome variable. Future recommendations: The results of the study indicate that lowering the transaction cost can increase customer’s willingness to pay after a price increase. It also indicates that increasing the product quality and service quality can increase the customer’s willingness to pay after a price increase. Previous research has showed the significant profitability firms can make when they adapt to value-based pricing. Therefore, further studies to investigate the customer’s willingness to pay after a price increase may be of interest.
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HUI, Sun Yuen. "Managing sales and product returns under the word-of-mouth effect : pricing, quality, and restocking fee decisions." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2017. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cds_etd/16.
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This paper considers a two-echelon supply chain involving a manufacturer and a retailer who make their pricing, quality, and restocking fee decisions under the word-of-mouth (WOM) effect. To investigate the decision-making problem for the sales and product returns, we construct a leader-follower game model in which the manufacturer first determines his quality effort and the wholesale price and the retailer then decides on her retail price and the restocking fee. Our results show that the wholesale and retail prices under no WOM effect are smaller than those when the WOM effect exists; and, as the WOM has a higher impact on consumer purchases, the retailer should increase her retail price, and the manufacturer should also spend more quality control effort and raise his wholesale price. In addition, when the WOM effect exists, both the restocking fee and the retail price are decreasing in the mismatch probability. It is interesting to learn that a positive WOM may not help achieve more total sales and realized sales than a negative WOM, and the realized sales under the full refund policy may be lower than those under a partial refund policy. We also find that the manufacturer and the retailer may not benefit under the WOM effect, which mainly depends on how consumers are sensitive to the restocking fee and the WOM. The retailer can benefit from the full refund policy when the mismatch chance is not high, whereas the manufacturer can always benefit from the full refund policy.
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Davila, Luis A. "Government participation in pricing farm products." Thesis, Kansas State University, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/9830.
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Sood, Anshul 1978. "Competitive multi-period pricing for perishable products." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/17724.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-165).
Pricing of a perishable product over a multi-period time horizon is a challenging problem under an oligopolistic market framework. We propose and study a model for multi-period pricing in an oligopolistic market for a single perishable product. Each participating seller in the market has a fixed inventory of the product at the beginning of the time horizon and additional production is not an available option. Any unsold inventory at the end of the horizon is worthless. The sellers do not have the option of periodically reviewing and replenishing their inventory. Such a model is appropriate for modelling competition in situations where inventory replenishment decisions are made over a longer time horizon and can be considered exogenous to the pricing decision process. This kind of a setup can be used to model pricing of air fares, hotel reservations, bandwidth in communication networks, etc. In this thesis, we study two issues related to multi-period pricing of a perishable product. First we study the competitive aspect of the problem. Second we study the setup where the demand function for each seller has some associated uncertainty. We assume that the sellers would like to adopt a policy that is robust to adverse uncertain circumstances. We discuss the challenges associated with the analysis for this model.
(cont.) We study non-cooperative Nash equilibrium policies for the sellers. We discuss why known results from the literature do not extend to this model. We introduce an optimization approach using results from variational inequality theory and robust optimization to establish existence of the pricing equilibrium policy and comment on the uniqueness of the pricing equilibrium policy. We also introduce an iterative learning algorithm for computing the equilibrium policy and analyze its convergence. We study how much is lost in terms of efficiency (in terms of total system profit) due to competition. Finally, we illustrate our results with some numerical examples and discuss some insights.
by Anshul Sood.
Ph.D.
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Li, Yanzhi. "Joint pricing and inventory control for perishable products /." View abstract or full-text, 2006. http://library.ust.hk/cgi/db/thesis.pl?IELM%202006%20LI.
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Rana, Rupal. "Dynamic pricing for perishable products using reinforcement learning." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2011. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/36855/.
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Revenue management is one of the successful applications of operations research. The area of revenue management we are concerned with, in this thesis is dynamic pricing. More specifically, we are concerned with establishing a pricing policy that maximises the revenue for a fixed number of products or services in a finite selling horizon. The characteristics of the industries considered are, the full inventory of items is available for sale at the beginning of the selling period, no re-ordering is allowed, and the items unsold by the deadline have a constant salvage value of zero.
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Ye, Kelly (Kelly Yunqing). "Joint pricing and inventory decision for competitive products." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/43094.
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Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 37-38).
We consider the joint pricing and inventory decision problem for a single retailer who orders, stocks and sells multiple products. The products are competitive in nature, e.g., these maybe similar products from multiple brands. Demand for a product depends on its price as well as the price of all competing products. We show that the optimal pricing and inventory policy is similar to the base-stock, list-price policy which is known to be optimal for the single product case. In addition, the base-stock level of each product is nonincreasing with the inventory level of other products. This structure suggests that one can improve profit by simultaneously managing all the products rather than managing each product independently of other products.
by Kelly (Yunqing) Ye.
S.M.
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Katsura, Yuichi. "Efficient pricing and hedging of structured credit products." Thesis, Imperial College London, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/7400.
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Wadhwa, Hitendra K. S. (Hitendra Kumar Singh). "Models for pricing and inventory management of seasonal products." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/10800.
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Zhang, Lei Ph D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. "Multi-period pricing for perishable products : uncertainty and competition." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39208.
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Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Computation for Design and Optimization Program, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 107-109).
The pricing problem in a multi-period setting is a challenging problem and has attracted much attention in recent years. In this thesis, we consider a monopoly and an oligopoly pricing problem. In the latter, several sellers simultaneously seek an optimal pricing policy for their products. The products are assumed to be differentiated and substitutable. Each seller has the option to set prices for her products at each time period, and her goal is to find a pricing policy that will yield the maximum overall profit. Each seller has a fixed initial inventory of each product to be allocated over the entire time horizon and does not have the option to produce additional inventory between periods. There are no holding costs or back-order costs. In addition, the products are perishable and have no salvage costs. This means that at the end of the entire time horizon, any remaining products will be worthless. The demand function each seller faces for each product is uncertain and is affected by both the prices at the current period and past pricing history for her and her competitors. In this thesis, we address both the uncertain and the competitive aspect of the problem. First, we study the uncertain aspect of the problem in a simplified setting, where there is only one seller and two periods in the model.
(cont.) We use ideas of robust optimization, adjustable robust optimization, dynamic programming and stochastic optimization to find adaptable closed loop pricing policies. Theoretical and numerical results show how the budget of uncertainty, the presence of a reference price, delayed resource allocation, and feedback control affect the quality of the pricing policies. Second, we extend the model to a multi-period setting, where the computation becomes a major issue. We use a delayed constraint generation method to significantly increase the size of the problem that our models can handle. Finally, we consider the pricing problem in an oligopoly setting. We show the existence of solution for both the best response subproblem and the market equilibrium problem for all of the models we discuss in the thesis. We also consider an iterative learning algorithm and illustrate through simulations that an equilibrium pricing policy can be computed for all of our models.
by Lei Zhang.
S.M.
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Mutlu, Özcan. "Determination of optimal pricing and warranty policies." Morgantown, W. Va. : [West Virginia University Libraries], 1999. http://etd.wvu.edu/templates/showETD.cfm?recnum=900.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 1999.Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains xii, 147 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-113).
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Hansson, Fredrik. "A pricing and performance study on auto-callable structured products." Thesis, KTH, Matematisk statistik, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-102701.
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Abstract We propose an algorithm to price and analyze the performance of auto-callable structured _nancial products. The algorithm contains Monte-Carlo simulations in order to reproduce, as probable as possible, a future product. This model is then compared to other, previously presented models. The di_erent in-data parameters together with a time dependency study is then performed to evaluate what one might expect when investing in these products. Numerical results conclude that, the risks taken by the investor closely reect the potential return for each product. When constructing these products for the near future, one must closely evaluate the demand from the investors i.e. evaluate the level of risk that the investors are willing to take.
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Zhang, Shengqiu, and 张盛球. "Dynamic pricing strategies for new products with extended warranty contracts." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10722/209470.
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An extended warranty provides consumers the opportunity to rectify product failures at little or no cost after the expiry of the base warranty. Empirical evidence has shown that the selling of extended warranty contract (EWC) has become a profitable business in many manufacturing and retail industries. This thesis investigates the dynamic pricing problem for a new product with the option of purchasing an extended warranty contract (EWC). The research simultaneously determines the pricing strategies for both the product and the associated EWC, and the production rate to maximize the manufacturer’s long-term total profit. The results show that the provision of EWC will significantly affect the optimal pricing strategy for the new product, and may also affect its optimal production plan.
The research establishes three mathematical models for making optimal pricing decisions under different operational settings. The first model considers a centralized selling system in which the manufacturer sells the product and offers the associated EWC to the consumer directly. The second model extends the first one by incorporating the production and inventory decisions in the analysis. The third model considers a decentralized system in which the manufacturer sells the new product to consumers through an independent retailer. The EWC can be offered either by the manufacturer or by the retailer. It is shown that each scenario leads to a differential Stackelberg game in which the manufacturer and the retailer are players.
For the first model, the Pontryagin maximum principle is used to derive the necessary condition for the optimal pricing strategies for both the new product and the associated EWC. Some properties for pricing the new product optimally are then studied. Apart from analysing the characteristics of the optimal pricing strategy under general demand conditions, closed-form solutions for the problem are also derived for some specific demand functions. In cases where closed-form solutions cannot be found, a gradient algorithm is applied to solve the problem numerically. In the second model, the production rate becomes a decision variable because the unit production cost depends on the chosen production rate. Results of the analysis show that the optimal selling price for the EWC remains the same as that in the first model, while the optimal selling price for the new product are affected by the production rate. The results also show that the gradient algorithm fails to converge, thus is no longer suitable for the second model due to the complexity caused by the boundary conditions. A more robust control vector parameterization method is then developed to compute the numerical solution. Analysing the third model theoretically indicates that some necessary conditions related to the optimal wholesale price and the optimal retail price must be satisfied for the existence of an open-loop Stackelberg equilibrium. Some important managerial insights are derived on the basis of the properties characterizing the optimal solution. The control vector parameterization method is then further developed to solve the differential game problem. Numerical experiments are then carried out to demonstrate which distribution channel results in the largest profit.published_or_final_version
Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering
Doctoral
Doctor of Philosophy
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Sinchaisri, Wichinpong (Wichinpong Park). "Pricing with quality perception : theory and experiment." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/104563.
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Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Computation for Design and Optimization Program, 2016.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 111-115).
Quality is one of the most important factors behind a decision to purchase any product. Consumers have long assumed that price and quality are highly correlated, and that as the price of a product increases, its quality also increases ("you get what you pay for"). Several researchers have studied how consumers use price to infer quality, but very few have investigated the impact of pricing strategies, particularly price markdowns, on quality perception and how a retailer should react to such behavior. Our key research questions, viewed through both an empirical and a theoretical lens, concern how markdowns with different discount levels may induce different consumer behaviors and how the firm should incorporate them when optimizing its markdown policy. We empirically elicit the relationship between a consumer's quality perception and available price information, and refine a consumer demand model to capture these insights, together with other motives-reference dependence, loss aversion, patience, and optimism. For the retailer, we characterize the structure of the market segmentation and analyze its optimal markdown strategy when consumers are sensitive to quality. We present conditions in which it is optimal for the firm to apply a markdown to its products. When consumers are more sensitive to the product's original price than to the discount, or are impatient to wait for the future discounts, the retailer can earn the maximum revenue when applying a markdown strategy. Furthermore, we advocate that the firm should pre-announce the information about future markdowns in order to avoid the negative effect of the consumers' inaccurate estimates.
by Wichinpong Sinchaisri.
S.M.
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Osman, Abdelghafour Mohamed. "Structured products: Pricing, hedging and applications for life insurance companies." Thesis, Uppsala University, Department of Mathematics, 2009. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-119969.
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Neven, D. J. "On the pricing and selection of differentiated products in oligopoly." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1985. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.371709.
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Liou, Ching-Pin. "The lattice approaches for pricing path-dependent mortgage-related products." Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies / OhioLINK, 1994. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1057678646.
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Komak, Wagma, Jeremy Smart, and Jennifer White. "Quality Assessment of Internet Pharmaceutical Products." The University of Arizona, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/624403.
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Class of 2007 AbstractObjectives: The purpose of this study is to assess the quality of study medications obtained without a prescription through international websites. Methods: Samples of levothyroxine, warfarin, and sildenafil were obtained through various websites and compared to U.S. standards. Each sample was physically evaluated for weight, color, shape, and external tablet markings. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was performed to quantify the amount of active ingredient. Results: When physically inspected, only 3 of the 9 lots met FDA labeling requirements. Three of 60 (20 tablets from 3 lots) of the individual levothyroxine tablets were out of the USP acceptable range (90% - 110%). For warfarin, 16 of the 60 samples (20 samples from 3 lots) of the individual tablets were out of the USP acceptable range (95% - 105%). When averaged, each of the lots for both levothyroxine and warfarin were within their USP acceptable ranges. As sildenafil is not available as generic in the U.S., there is no USP standard acceptable range for comparison. All of the sildenafil samples fell within 90%- 105% of Viagra® tablets obtained from a local pharmacy. Conclusions: While there were a few samples outside of the U.S. acceptable range, the majority of samples analyzed for active ingredient were within the range published in the USP. While the outcomes of this study presented interesting findings, further evaluation in larger studies is needed to properly assess the quality of foreign medications purchased over the internet.
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Philipps, Jörg [Verfasser]. "Pricing and Hedging of Unit-Linked Life Insurance Products / Jörg Philipps." München : Verlag Dr. Hut, 2012. http://d-nb.info/1025821246/34.
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Chu, Chi Chiu. "Pricing models of equity-linked insurance products and LIBOR exotic derivatives /." View abstract or full-text, 2005. http://library.ust.hk/cgi/db/thesis.pl?MATH%202005%20CHU.
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Bi, Yalin. "Estimation and pricing for substitutable products in choice-based revenue management." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2018. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/420666/.
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-It has been proved that choice-based Revenue Management can result in significant increases in revenue in situations where a seller is pricing a set of substitutable products. This is particularly applicable to the transport industry and we present an example of train ticket sales. Estimating customer choice models is difficult, particularly in situations where the data file is incomplete. We use the Multinomial Logit (MNL) model to describe customer preferences, and a two-step algorithm to jointly estimate the parameters of this model and the customer arrival rate. A simple Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method is also applied to update our belief of arrival rate and customer choice model. The dynamic programming model for the choice-based pricing problem suffers from the “curse of dimensionality ”. The computational time increases dramatically and makes it impossible to solve the problem with exact solutions. Approximate dynamic programming methods can be used to solve the problem. We propose a new approximation method that reduces the running time. The thesis will describe the complete methodology that we have implemented and provide some numerical results. As these are live sales systems, it is important that the system continues to earn revenues while the parameters are being estimated. A decision-making problem is needed to maintain a balance between the learning of customer preference (exploration) and earning (exploitation) in choice-based Revenue Management. In order to maximise the total revenue, the seller must decide whether to choose the current optimal price (exploitation) or to set prices that help to better estimate customer choice behaviour (exploration). We propose two pulling policies in a Multi-armed Bandit (MAB) experiment to balance the trade-off between exploration and exploitation.
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Ferrer, Juan-Carlos O. 1970. "Pricing bundles of products and services in the high-tech industry." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8528.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 167-172).
The High-Tech industry faces tremendous complexity in product design because of the large number of different products that can be offered and the mix of products and services that exists. Information Technology (IT) products and services available in the market are increasing exponentially. Bundling appears in this industry as a natural mechanism to reduce complexity for sellers and buyers and to reduce variability on the customer's valuation of individual products. The first chapter of this dissertation discusses these issues. Chapter Two addresses the real-world problem of pricing bundles of IT services and products contracts when there is a high setup cost. Customers pay a fixed monthly fee. The company finances the hardware (HW) and software (SW) while the services and support are paid in a monthly basis out of the fee. The solution approach computes the monthly fee to be charged for every offered bundle, taking into account that customers may defect before the end of the contract. The dynamics of the system account for defection of current customers and arrival of new ones, at each period. Optimal pricing policies and equilibrium points of the system are characterized. Chapter Three addresses the determination of the optimal bundle's composition and price while maximizing total expected profits. The setting is a high-tech company in a highly competitive environment that must build a bundle and put it out in the market. Bundles are built from a set of components that meet technical constraints. The customers' choice among competitors' bundles (not under the company's control) and the company's bundle (under its control) is modeled in a random utility framework. A nonlinear mixed integer programming formulation of the company's decision problem is presented and solved.
(cont.) Chapter Four analyzes telecommunications networks for broadband services. The network consists of several regions whose connecting links have a given bandwidth capacity at each point in time. Bandwidth is an intangible perishable commodity that has to be sold in advance. The network owner faces the problem of selling the available bandwidth capacity of the delivery period from the present to the last selling period. In the analysis, the network owner faces an external demand for each market or product (capacity between two cities) that can be fulfilled by assigning capacity of the corresponding arc (direct link) or by assigning capacity of an alternative path (indirect link), incurring a higher cost. Customers do not distinguish between routings as long as the requested connection between the pair of cities fulfills the specified Quality of Service. The goal is to maximize the network owner's revenues while deciding on each period whether or not to bundle links.
by Juan-Carlos O. Ferrer.
Ph.D.
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Trottier, Denis-Alexandre. "Essays on modeling, hedging and pricing of insurance and financial products." Doctoral thesis, Université Laval, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11794/29926.
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Cette thèse est composée de trois articles abordant différentes problématiques en relation avec la modélisation, la couverture et la tarification des risques d’assurance et financiers. “A general class of distortion operators for pricing contingent claims with applications to CAT bonds” est un projet présentant une méthode générale pour dériver des opérateurs de distorsion compatibles avec la valorisation sans arbitrage. Ce travail offre également une nouvelle classe simple d’opérateurs de distorsion afin d’expliquer les primes observées dans le marché des obligations catastrophes. “Local hedging of variable annuities in the presence of basis risk” est un travail dans lequel une méthode de couverture des rentes variables en présence de risque de base est développée. La méthode de couverture proposée bénéficie d’une exposition plus élevée au risque de marché et d’une diversification temporelle du risque pour obtenir un rendement excédentaire et faciliter l’accumulation de capital. “Option pricing under regime-switching models : Novel approaches removing path-dependence” est un projet dans lequel diverses mesures neutres au risque sont construites pour les modèles à changement de régime de manière à générer des processus de prix d’option qui ne présentent pas de dépendance au chemin, en plus de satisfaire d’autres propriétés jugées intuitives et souhaitables.This thesis is composed of three papers addressing different issues in relation to the modeling, hedging and pricing of insurance and financial risks. “A general class of distortion operators for pricing contingent claims with applications to CAT bonds” is a project presenting a general method for deriving probability distortion operators consistent with arbitrage-free pricing. This work also offers a simple novel class of distortions operators for explaining catastrophe (CAT) bond spreads. “Local hedging of variable annuities in the presence of basis risk” is a work in which a method to hedge variable annuities in the presence of basis risk is developed. The proposed hedging scheme benefits from a higher exposure to equity risk and from time diversification of risk to earn excess return and facilitate the accumulation of capital. “Option pricing under regime-switching models: Novel approaches removing path-dependence” is a project in which various risk-neutral measures for hidden regime-switching models are constructed in such a way that they generate option price processes which do not exhibit path-dependence in addition to satisfy other properties deemed intuitive and desirable.
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Passalidou, Eudokia. "Optimal premium pricing strategies for nonlife products in competitive insurance markets." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 2015. http://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/2033901/.
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Non-life insurance pricing depends on different costs including claim and business acquisition costs, management expenses and other parameters such as margin for fluctuations in claims experience, expected profits etc. Nevertheless, in a competitive insurance market environment, company's premium should respond to changes in the level of premiums being offered by competitors. In this thesis, two major issues are being investigated. Primarily, it is explored how a company's optimal strategy can be determined in a competitive market and secondly a connection between this strategy and market's competition is established. More specifically, two functional equations for the volume of business are proposed. In the first place, the volume of business function is related to the past year's experience, the average premium of the market, the company's premium and a stochastic disturbance. Thus, an optimal premium strategy which maximizes the total expected linear discounted utility of company's wealth over a finite time horizon is defined analytically and endogenously. In the second place, the volume of business function is enriched with company's reputation, for the first time according to the author's knowledge. Moreover, the premium elasticity and reputation elasticity of the volume of business are taking into consideration. Thus, an optimal premium strategy which maximizes the total expected linear discounted utility of company's wealth over a finite time horizon is calculated and for some special cases analytical solutions are presented. Furthermore, an upper bound or a minimum premium excess strategy is found for a company with positive reputation and positive premium elasticity of the volume of business. Thirdly, the calculation of a fair premium in a competitive market is discussed. A nonlinear premium-reserve (P-R) model is presented and the premium is derived by minimizing a quadratic performance criterion concerns the present value of the reserve. The reserve is a stochastic equation, which includes an additive random nonlinear function of the state, premium and not necessarily Gaussian noise which is independently distributed in time, provided only that the mean value and the covariance of the random function is zero and a quadratic function of the state, premium and other parameters, respectively. In this quadratic representation of the covariance function, new parameters are implemented and enriched further the previous linear models, such as the income insurance elasticity of demand, the number of insured and the inflation in addition to the company's reputation. Interestingly, for the very first time, the derived optimal premium in a competitive market environment is also depended on the company's reserve among the other parameters. In each chapter numerical applications show the applicability of the proposed models and their results are further explained and analyzed. Finally, suggestions for further research and summary of the conclusions complete the thesis.
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Odugbemi, Adeniyi Adedayo. "Safe Quality Food Certification and Producing Safe and Quality Food Products." ScholarWorks, 2017. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/4399.
Full textAbstract:
The food sector accounts for $1 of every $6 in the U.S. economy, with more than $700 billion in revenue every year. However, incidents of food safety and substandard quality continue to rise. Consumers are beginning to mistrust and have lower confidence in the food supply chain. Food manufacturers need to address this issue to remain profitable. One approach includes the introduction of food policy programs that allow for independent auditing and certifications such as the Safe Quality Food (SQF) certification. The SQF certification was established as a rigorous and credible benchmark for food handlers to enforce food safety and quality standards. The purpose of this qualitative case study research was to evaluate the perceived usefulness of the SQF certification to food manufacturers. Guided by the theory of diffusion of innovation, data collection for this study included 35 stakeholder semistructured interviews and a review of 5 publicly available documents for triangulation. Thematic analysis of the transcripts was performed to generate answers to the research questions. Study findings revealed that if properly implemented, the SQF certification is a credible and robust GFSI scheme that provides effective guidelines for food production. Findings also revealed 2 opportunities for improvement. Participants noted that training programs for SQF practitioners and auditors should be improved, likewise more commitment and involvement of facility management should be required. The findings may contribute to social change by providing food producers with strategies to minimize food production failures. With the perceived benefits of the SQF certification, other food producers who have not adopted this scheme can benefit from this holistic certification to enhance their food production network.
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Lindström, Anders. "An Asynchronous Meta-Data Driven Web UI for Pricing of Structured Products." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Avdelningen för beräkningsvetenskap, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-257469.
Full textAbstract:
In the process of building maintainable and customizable software used and displayed in different mediums, a user interface (UI) that is auto-generated from meta-data can be built. That way minimal effort can be made when customizing the software. This thesis took place at the financial software company SunGard. Traders have requested a web based solution to one of SunGard's financial softwares, and will be used for managing structured products. The solution had to work with some already defined web and server components that SunGard is using. The web tool used for making a prototype and evaluating the suitability was AngularJS. As a result it was found that it was possible to create a meta-data driven UI. Some programmatic design issues when generating the UI are discussed.
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Munger, Jeanne Lauren. "An experimental application of prospect theory to the pricing of bundled products." Connect to resource, 1992. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view.cgi?acc%5Fnum=osu1262630995.
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Fang, Fei. "Joint pricing and inventory decisions for substitutable perishable products under demand uncertainty." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2016. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/399814/.
Full textAbstract:
The focus of the work of this thesis is to develop demand uncertainty models for retailers making optimal pricing and inventory decisions on substitutable and perishable products. In particular we study three applications of demand uncertainty models: (i) a stochastic programming approach for two substitutable and perishable products over a two period planning horizon; (ii) a stochastic programming approach for multiple substitutable and perishable products over multiple periods; (iii) a robust optimization approach for two substitutable and perishable products over a single period. The three models support decision makers in retailing to incorporate the future demand uncertainty and substitution between similar products into their pricing and inventory decisions. In the context of a stochastic programming approach for two substitutable and perishable products problem over two periods, a stochastic dynamic programming model has been proposed in which the retailer aims at maximizing the total profit. The property of decision variables is analysed, an efficient search algorithm is developed to obtain the optimal results. Numerical results are reported using a case study based on a high-street fashion company. The sensitivity of the models' parameters is also analysed to address the great importance of data accuracy on decision variables and total profit. The benefits of considering pricing and inventory decisions simultaneously will be demonstrated and the total profit is observed to be significantly improved through the consideration of price substitution between substitutable products. In the context of a stochastic programming approach for multiple substitutable and perishable products problem over multiple periods, two stochastic dynamic programming models are proposed in which the decision maker can employ multiple markdowns on the prices. An efficient search algorithm has been developed by analysing the property of the decision variables. The benefits of making joint pricing and inventory decisions, considering substitutions between similar products; and dividing selling periods into more periods have been quantified. In the context of the robust optimization approach, we relax the assumption on the complete knowledge of the demand distribution from the stochastic dynamic programming model and develop a robust optimization model. The demand function is assumed to belong to an uncertainty set, and our objective is to find the optimal ordering quantity and price which maximize the worst-case profit. We extend a Newsvendor model in the face of uncertainty to consider the optimal pricing and inventory decisions of a retailer. Numerical tests are presented based on a case study of the retailing branch of a solar panel manufacturer. The trade-off between uncertainty level and total profits is illustrated, the sensitivity of parameters is also analysed.
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Wong, Leon Keat Leong Accounting Australian School of Business UNSW. "The pricing or mispricing of earnings quality in Australia." Awarded By:University of New South Wales. Accounting, 2009. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/43569.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis investigates the pricing (or mispricing) of earnings quality in Australia. It investigates whether information in earnings quality is used by investors in valuing firms, evidenced by an association between earnings quality and the cost of equity. In the alternate form, the question may be posed as whether earnings quality is mispriced by investors such that there may be opportunities to earn abnormal profits from trading strategies based on earnings quality. Ten earnings quality constructs are studied: total accruals, unexpected accruals, cash-to-profit, accrual quality, persistence, predictability, smoothness, relevance, conservatism and timeliness. In the cost of equity pricing tests, when earnings quality is proxied using one construct (accrual quality), it is found to be associated with the cost of equity. However, when the additional nine constructs are included in the regression models, accrual quality loses statistical significance. Various other constructs are found to be associated with the cost of equity depending on the choice of the cost of equity proxy. In the trading strategy tests, there is some initial evidence of trading strategy opportunities for firms with high quality earnings. However, after deleting outlier observations with annual buy-and-hold returns of greater than 200% the potential for earning abnormal returns from a hedge portfolio strategy disappears. The existence of Australian evidence on the accruals anomaly provides a convenient basis to validate the results of the earnings quality trading strategy tests. Although no clear evidence on the accruals anomaly is found, results are obtained which appear to be consistent with prior Australian evidence of the accruals anomaly, depending on the research design choices made. Overall, the evidence on whether earnings quality is priced or mispriced in Australia is best viewed as inconclusive. It highlights the importance of conducting thorough robustness tests and suggests a need for caution by researchers in making inferences from a narrow set of earnings quality constructs and research design specifications.
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Schilkrut, Ariel Z. (Ariel Zalman) 1967. "Managing customer relationship channels through pricing and service quality." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8771.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-116).
The present dissertation focuses on how firms should interact with their customers. The emergence of new technologies such as the Internet give firms new ways to communicate with their customers and raise a number of questions: Which channels should the firm make available to their customers? What level of service should it provide at each of the channels? What types of incentives should the firm offer to encourage customers to use a specific channel? What are the effects of these decisions on customer retention and the firm's revenues and profits? We investigate the effect of service quality and fee structures on customers' behavior and on the long-term value of the relationship for the firm. We consider a firm that charges its customers a periodic membership foe plus an access or usage fee. Customers select the frequency of interaction with the firm based on their level of satisfaction. After every interaction, customers update their perception of service level and stay with the firm as long as the utility they expect to obtain from the relationship is above a certain threshold. Based on this model of customer behavior we model the aggregate system as a queueing network from which we derive structural properties. We first analyze the case of a firm that provides a service through a unique channel with the objective of understanding the basic underlying dynamics in these systems and developing an analytically tractable methodology that can be extended to the more complex multi-channel settings. We then extend the approach to multiple channels by considering the case of complementary services where each service is delivered through a unique channel. We finally analyze the case of services that are provided through alternative or substitute channels.
by Ariel Z. Schilkrut.
Ph.D.
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Shen, Jian. "Essays on Nonlinear Pricing, Quality Investment, and Consumer Search." The Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397250097.
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Sears, Kenneth. "Viewpoint quality model : a software quality model for the application of software quality metrics." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.341698.
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Espinoza, Omar A. "Quality Measurement in the Wood Products Supply Chain." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/37791.
Full textAbstract:
The purpose of this research is to learn about quality measurement practices in a wood products supply chain. According to the Supply Chain Management paradigm, companies no longer compete as individual entities, but as part of complex networks of suppliers and customers, linked together by flows of materials and information. Evidence suggests that a high degree of integration between supply chain members is essential to achieve superior market and financial performance. This study investigates the potential benefits from adopting supply chain quality management practices, focusing specifically on quality measurement. A case-study was conducted to accomplish the objectives of the research. An exemplary wood products supply chain was studied in great detail. The current state was compared with best practices, as reported in the literature. Supply chain quality metrics were used to assess current performance and a simulation model was developed to estimate the impact of changes in significant factors affecting quality, such as production volume, on the supply chainâ s quality performance.
Quality measurement practices in the supply chain of study are described in detail in this dissertation. A high degree of internal integration was observed in the focal company, attributed in great part to the leadership of management, which formulates comprehensive quality planning, specifying quality measurement practices and goals. These practices provide the company with a competitive advantage, and have undoubtedly contributed to its relatively strong market share and financial performance. Significant improvements in defect rate and on-time performance at all levels in the supply chain have been achieved in great part thanks to current initiatives. There is room for improvement, however, regarding external integration; the supply chain of study could benefit from more information sharing with its external suppliers and increasing its supplier development efforts. There is also a lack of true measures of supply chain quality performance that could facilitate tracing variances back to their origin upstream the supply chain. Supply chain metrics must reflect the contribution of each supply chain member to the overall performance, and span the entire supply chain. This is the first study that looks in depth at quality measurement practices from a supply chain perspective. It is also one of very few studies of supply chain management applied to the wood products industry. Examples are presented of how a supply chain performance measurement system can be developed. Results from this research show that it is important to adopt a supply chain perspective when designing a performance measurement system, not least to avoid sub-optimization. Poor quality at any point in the supply chain eventually translates into higher prices for the final customer, is detrimental to customer dissatisfaction, and hurts profitability; with the end result of declining competitiveness of the entire system.Ph. D.
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Wong, Yun-Wen, and 翁韻雯. "Value-Based Pricing, the Third Law of Demand, and the Pricing Policy of Multiple-Quality Product." Thesis, 2015. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/gskvgd.
Full textAbstract:
碩士中原大學
企業管理研究所
103
In the modern marketing theories, value-based pricing is the pricing strategy fits marketing concept most. The essence of value-based pricing is the product pricing strategy depends upon the product value perceived by customers. However, there are different forms of value-based pricing. In this research, we apply the third law of demand, or the Alchian and Allen effect, to explore the nature of value-based pricing in the highly competitive market of multiple-quality products and try to decipher how different quality may generate different perceived value to customers. In the empirical research, we adopt one-month transaction data of the framed pictures of jigsaw puzzles from a famous jigsaw puzzle company in Taiwan. The full transaction and analysis unit includes both the frame and the picture of jigsaw puzzles. The empirical analysis suggests that both the third law of demand the value-based pricing is a useful approach to explore the customers'' product preferences in different market segments. In our research, the least square method (OLS) and the two stage of least square method (2SLS) are two primary quantitative and empirical techniques of investigation. The demand of jigsaw puzzles is categorized into different market segments for empirical analysis based on different features of jigsaw puzzles, like the piece number of jigsaw puzzles, the style of jigsaw puzzles, and so on. The empirical finding suggests that there is significantly positive correlation between the price of jigsaw puzzle and the frame price. It implies that the higher primary quality price, the higher full product price. In addition, the empirical research also informs us that the preference sequence of frames in different market segments, based upon the piece number and the image style, is different from the preference sequence of frames of whole sample data. It implies that customers in different market segments have different perceived values of products. The above-mentioned empirical results support not only that the third law of demand can be applied to probe into the value of the multiple-quality product, but also that the concepts of the third law of demand and the multiple-quality product can provide the definite theoretical foundation for value-based pricing.
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Chen, Ying-An, and 陳盈安. "Appropriate Pricing, Product Quality, and Advertising Strategies in Dual Distribution Channels." Thesis, 2016. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/03711987531917123218.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立交通大學
資訊管理研究所
104
The competition in dual distribution channels is always discussed in supply chain systems. In addition, the competition becomes keener because of e-tail distribution channels. Therefore, how the supply chain members make their appropriate strategies becomes more important. I have studied manufacturer's and retailer's competitive behavior when manufacturer provide modularization and return policy in dual distribution channels (Chen, 2007). However, customers would not know the product functions before time to market without advertising strategy. It would delay the effect of word-of-mouth marketing, enhance the risk of imitation, and reduce the demand by competitors. On the other hand, we relax the meaning of product quality enhancement and use one price policy which has not been discussed in previous study. Finally, we compare the different models numerically, conduct parametric analysis, and reveal some managerial insights
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Tseng, An-Hsien, and 曾安顯. "Customer Satisfaction: The Impact of Product Quality, Quality of Service and Pricing Factors towards Tableware Market." Thesis, 2017. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/vyu2r5.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立彰化師範大學
企業管理學系 國際企業經營管理(IMBA)
105
Of our daily life “eating, clothing, housing, transportation, education, and music”, “eating” is in the first place, so at any time or any place, as long as people gathering together, there will be the demand of food so as to the tableware, which has become an integral part of people’s daily life. Among them, product quality and quality of service are inseparable with customer relationship, and poor product quality and poor service would result in destroying the enterprise image. As a result, understanding services demanded by customers and then deploying resources to improve customer satisfaction, maintain customer relationship, and avoid customer lost is an important topic. In this study, the customers of the case company are the research object. The main interviewees need to have the experience of purchasing or inquiring from this case company. Through literature review in Chapter 2, quality of service, product quality, and price affect customer satisfaction. Thus, this study uses a tableware manufacturer as the research case and proposes three hypotheses. H1: product quality has a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction. H2: quality of service has a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction. H3: product price has a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction. The results show that quality of service has a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction. Product quality has a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction. Product price has no influence on customer satisfaction. The influence of quality of service is slightly greater than that of product quality. Based on the results, product quality and quality of service are critically important. The optimization of product quality and service level is important to gain the competitiveness of the company and improve customer satisfaction. Moreover, enhancing service personnel professional ability is a focal point. In general, customers all know how to use tableware products but not necessarily can choose appropriate tableware products. Under such circumstances, sales staff in the pre-sale service stage can use professional knowledge to assist customers how to choose and purchase tableware products in terms of material selections, processes, and differentiations among other tableware manufacturers in order to increase customer perceived value. The professional competence in pre-sale service stage for service personnel is the focus that this case company should be enhanced to further strengthen the customers’ confidence in product and customer satisfaction.
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Mok, Yat-Koon. "Essays on production and pricing decisions." Thesis, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/6891.
Full textAbstract:
There has been considerable interest in finding and explaining the basic elements that can
drive product quality up. In the literature this is largely done by modelling the effects of
investing in learning and process improvement, and of cost reduction. In the first essay,
demand is modelled as a function of price and quality. With this demand function, the
firm should produce output of higher quality, the increase in quality being dependent on
consumers’ sensitivity to quality and to price, and the effect of technological improvement
on product price and quality are very different from those when the demand is a function
of price alone.
Some twenty states in the U.S. have passed recycling laws which mandate consumption
of old newspaper by the newsprint industry. To study the effect of regulation, a model
is used in which two firms compete under the regulatory constraint—one firm producing
the recycled product, the other the virgin product. Assuming the regulatory constraint
is binding, and the demand for the recycled product is derived solely from the legislation,
interesting results such as the two firms share equal profits, and consumers pay higher
average price in competitive equilibrium than the cartel price, are obtained in the second
essay. The two firm model is generalized to include n firms which compete under the
same kind of regulatory constraint in the third essay. Results similar to the two firm case
are obtained.
When the recycled product and the virgin product are partially substitutable, regulation that mandates consumption of the recycled product results in infinitely many
equilibria. A dominating equilibrium exists if the demand parameters satisfy a certain
condition, otherwise it is not clear how to select an equilibrium. On the other hand, a
suitable tax on the virgin product, or its producer, serves to induce compliance with the
recycling policy and equilibrium selection. The equilibrium prices and profits of the two
firms under the schemes of production tax, excessive consumption tax and progressive
profit tax are examined and compared in the fourth essay. It is interesting to find that
the tax rate for excessive consumption is comparatively low and, in equilibrium, this tax
scheme collects no tax payment.
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Střelický, Jiří. "Essays on Pricing, Product Quality and Intellectual Property Rights Protextion in Software Market." Doctoral thesis, 2011. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-296885.
Full textAbstract:
In this thesis, I explore the particular issues of pricing, product quality selection, and intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in the software market. In the first part of the thesis, I study price discrimination in a monopolistic software market. The monopolist charges different prices for the upgrade version and for the full version. Consumers are heterogeneous in taste for software that is infinitely durable and there is no resale. I show that price discrimination leads to a higher software quality but raises both absolute price and price per quality. This price discrimination decreases the total number of consumers compared to no discrimination. Finally, such discrimination decreases consumers' surplus but increases the developer's profit and social welfare that attains the social optimum in the limit. In the second part of the thesis, I focus on the interaction between a regulator's IPR protection policy against software piracy on the one side and the forms of IPR protection that software producers may themselves undertake to protect their IPR on the other side. Two developers, each offering a variety of different quality, compete for heterogeneous users who choose among purchasing a legal version, using an illegal copy, and not using a product at all. Using an illegal version...
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LING, YI-YUAN, and 林怡園. "A study on the relationships between product quality, cost position, pricing strategy, and business performance." Thesis, 1989. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/89887278212117367516.
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Nguyen, Thang Quang 1977. "Quality innovation: driving forces and implications for production, trade, and consumption." Thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/3389.
Full textAbstract:
The dissertation has three main chapters on product quality innovation. First, we compare innovation effort and social welfare between monopoly, duopoly, and the social planner in a dynamic model with quality dependent on a continuous know-how stock. The technology frontier--the largest reachable know-how socks--does not always positively depend on competitiveness, i.e. a duopoly may technologically surpass the social planner. However, social welfare is always positively tied to competitiveness. Second, with a general equilibrium model, we derive a relative price function expressing productivity and quality effects, and develop a method for inferring relative quality changes. An application to services versus goods of the US from 1946-2006 provides evidence on aggregate quality changes and suggests us to incorporate quality variations when explaining relative prices. Third, we build a two-product model where productivity changes lead to reallocations of labor between quantity production and quality innovation. The correlation between relative productivity and relative quality is negative for low-range substitutability and positive for medium-range substitutability between two products. Looking at services versus goods of the US, the correlation is negative and productivity-driven quality can play a significant role in general quality development.
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Shang, Yan. "Essays in Empirical Operations Management: Bayesian Learning of Service Quality and Structural Estimation of Complementary Product Pricing and Inventory Management." Diss., 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10161/12825.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation contributes to the rapidly growing empirical research area in the field of operations management. It contains two essays, tackling two different sets of operations management questions which are motivated by and built on field data sets from two very different industries --- air cargo logistics and retailing.
The first essay, based on the data set obtained from a world leading third-party logistics company, develops a novel and general Bayesian hierarchical learning framework for estimating customers' spillover learning, that is, customers' learning about the quality of a service (or product) from their previous experiences with similar yet not identical services. We then apply our model to the data set to study how customers' experiences from shipping on a particular route affect their future decisions about shipping not only on that route, but also on other routes serviced by the same logistics company. We find that customers indeed borrow experiences from similar but different services to update their quality beliefs that determine future purchase decisions. Also, service quality beliefs have a significant impact on their future purchasing decisions. Moreover, customers are risk averse; they are averse to not only experience variability but also belief uncertainty (i.e., customer's uncertainty about their beliefs). Finally, belief uncertainty affects customers' utilities more compared to experience variability.
The second essay is based on a data set obtained from a large Chinese supermarket chain, which contains sales as well as both wholesale and retail prices of un-packaged perishable vegetables. Recognizing the special characteristics of this particularly product category, we develop a structural estimation model in a discrete-continuous choice model framework. Building on this framework, we then study an optimization model for joint pricing and inventory management strategies of multiple products, which aims at improving the company's profit from direct sales and at the same time reducing food waste and thus improving social welfare.
Collectively, the studies in this dissertation provide useful modeling ideas, decision tools, insights, and guidance for firms to utilize vast sales and operations data to devise more effective business strategies.
Dissertation
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Ayar, Musa 1979. "Essays on vertical mergers, advertising, and competitive entry." Thesis, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/3821.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation consists of three independent essays. We briefly introduce these essays in chapter 1 and leave a comprehensive introduction to each essay. Chapter 2 considers a vertically separated industry where production takes time and vertical mergers shorten production time. We investigate the impact of vertical mergers on the downstream firms' ability to collude and show that vertical mergers facilitate downstream collusion. Chapter 3 provides a theoretical foundation for a puzzling empirical observation that advertising follows an inverted U shape for some new products. Chapter 4 analyzes an incumbent's response to a competitive entry. We show that if the quality of the entrant is uncertain, the incumbent can "jam" the quality signalling of the entrant. Finally, chapter 5 summarizes main conclusions of three essays.text
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Liao, Yi-Xiang, and 廖益祥. "Optimal Pricing Policy for Warranted Products." Thesis, 2012. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/6h4w63.
Full textAbstract:
博士國立臺灣科技大學
資訊管理系
100
In a competitive market environment, the main strategic decision for a seller is determining a price schedule with respect to a specific marketing feature of the product. This paper investigates how a monopolistic seller can optimally determine the price schedule for a product with different warranty plans. By incorporating buyers' heterogeneous preferences on product warranty length, the pricing problem of a product for the seller is mathematically formulated. Four different pricing scenarios of warranted products under varies optimization objective are developed to specify the pricing problems for the seller. In each scenario, the optimal price schedule is derived such that the optimization objective is maximized by employing an optimal control approach. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the features of the proposed problem in each scenario and the sensitivity analyses of the parameters on the optimal solutions are also performed.
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Hsieh, Chien-Yu, and 謝見侑. "Two-Stage Pricing of Seasonal Products." Thesis, 2009. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/11887976559357748730.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立中央大學
工業管理研究所
97
We consider that a decision maker determines the production quantity and the selling price of a seasonal product to maximize profit. Generally, seasonal products have two features, a fixed inventory of product and a limited sale period. Lee (2001) developed a single period model to study how the decision maker of a seasonal product production system to determine the appropriate cost in forecasting. And Shao (2007) studied optimal pricing strategies for seasonal products by using Dynamic programming. In our study, the decision maker based on the prior information can determine the best production quantity and the best selling price of a seasonal product. With the sales data obtained from the first sale period, we propose a Bayesian method to determine a better pricing strategy for the decision maker.
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Huang, Sin-Huei, and 黃欣慧. "Pricing Analysis on Structured Products: An example of equity linked products." Thesis, 2015. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/k4aa87.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立雲林科技大學
財務金融系
103
This study separately applies the historical and implied volatility to estimate the prices of the single equity-linked structured products and basket equity-linked structured products. And, it analyzes the performance of equity-linked structured products. The price samples of equity-linked structured products are extracted from the contracts of transaction in the market and simulative structured products of this study. The performance criterion is the root mean squared error (RMSE) of the relative error of the estimated and the sample prices. For the single equity-linked structured products, the historical volatility performs better than the implied volatility. However, the implied volatility performs better than the historical volatility for pricing the basket equity-linked structured products. Since the single equity-linked structured products had shorter time to maturity, and the basket of equity-linked structured products had longer time to expiration, thus, the historical volatility is considered to price the single equity-linked structured products and the implied volatility is considered to price the basket equity-linked structured products. The research results can provide reference information to investors while choosing customized structured products.
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Cheng, Hsiu-Fang, and 鄭秀芳. "On the Strategies of Leisure Products Pricing." Thesis, 2004. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/99632494613293763735.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立嘉義大學
休閒事業管理研究所
94
The purpose of this study is to investigate the differences of leisure products purchasing intention between price discount and discount level, the changes of discount levels to revisit willingness, and the effects of pricing sensitivity to purchasing intention. The research models are based on theories in the following areas: leisure products, price promotion strategies, and market segments. Convenience sample sampling method is used to survey the tourists in the Sontenkan Leisure Farm as an example. Questionnaires have been collected in this farm as well. The results of this study show that the pricing discount and discount level would affect leisure products purchasing intention. Different discount levels may raise revisiting willingness, and price sensitivity will influence the purchasing intention. Pricing strategies and discount levels of different market segments play an important role in the purchasing intention.