The Caching and Pricing Strategy for Information-Centric Networking with Advertisers’Participation

As users’access to the network has evolved into the acquisition of mass contents instead of IP addresses,the IP network architecture based on end-to-end communication cannot meet users’needs.Therefore,the Information-Centric Networking(ICN)came into being.From a technical point of view,ICN is a promising future network architecture.Researching and customizing a reasonable pricing mechanism plays a positive role in promoting the deployment of ICN.The current research on ICN pricing mechanism is focused on paid content.Therefore,we study an ICN pricing model for free content,which uses game theory based on Nash equilibrium to analysis.In this work,advertisers are considered,and an advertiser model is established to describe the economic interaction between advertisers and ICN entities.This solution can formulate the best pricing strategy for all ICN entities and maximize the benefits of each entity.Our extensive analysis and numerical results show that the proposed pricing framework is significantly better than existing solutions when it comes to free content.

Optimal Pricing Strategy for Data Center Considering Demand Response and Renewable Energy Source Accommodation

With the continuous development of information technology,data centers(DCs)consume significant and evergrowing amounts of electrical energy.Renewable energy sources(RESs)can act as clean solutions to meet this requirement without polluting the environment.Each DC serves numerous users for their data service demands,which are regarded as flexible loads.In this paper,the willingness to pay and time sensitivities of DC users are firstly explored,and the user-side demand response is then devised to improve the overall benefits of DC operation.Then,a Stackelberg game between a DC and its users is proposed.The upper-level model aims to maximize the profit of the DC,in which the time-varying pricing of data services is optimized,and the lower-level model addresses user’s optimal decisions for using data services while balancing their time and cost requirements.The original bi-level optimization problem is then transformed into a single-level problem using the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker optimality conditions and strong duality theory,which enables the problem to be solved efficiently.Finally,case studies are conducted to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method,as well as the effects of the time-varying data service price mechanism on the RES accommodation.

Production quality and pricing strategy for substitutable products under comparison effects

Comparison effects have been studied extensively in many fields.In particular,existing operations management articles have discussed the impact of comparison effects on enterprises'production and pricing decisions.Research has also shown that consumers'purchasing decisions are primarily determined by three factors:product quality,selling price,and comparison effects.The current study introduces the concepts of social and temporal comparison effects to examine how comparison effects influence a monopolist's production quality and pricing strategy for substitutable products.Results reveal the following:(1)Setting different prices for even two types of substitutable products with negligible quality differences can divide customers into three groups under the influence of social comparison effects in a single-stage model.(2)The monopolist should avoid using a price discrimination strategy in which products with a short market life cycle have the same quality but different prices.(3)When the market life cycle of products is sufficiently long in the single-product market and the market with two substitutable products,the monopolist's optimal choice in the second stage is to keep production quality constant and increase the selling price.Consequently,the number of buyers does not decrease because of temporal comparison effects.Therefore,the firm increases its revenue.(4)For the market with two substitutable products with quality differences,one approximate optimal strategy for the enterprise in the second stage is to keep the selling price constant with the assumption that product quality cannot be adjusted after the first period.At this point,the consumption situation in the market is the same as that in the first stage.Therefore,when no external constraints exist,the monopolist firm can obtain more benefits in the second stage than in the first stage by exploiting the temporal comparison effects of consumers in the second stage.(5)When consumer identity information can be confirmed in the market,social comparison effects,similar to temporal comparison effects,could help the enterprise increase its price and profit while maintaining product quality.These social and temporal comparison effects constrain consumers.Thus,the number of people who continueto buyproducts does not decrease.

Maximizing Supermarket Profits:Data-Driven Strategies for Pricing,Sales,and Forecasting

The actual circumstances of daily life are crucial for the purchasing and pricing strategies of supermarkets.Developing strategies based on these circumstances can assist businesses in ensuring profits and fostering win-win cooperation.This paper explores methods to maximize profit through purchasing and sales strategies.Initially,the relevant data for various categories of vegetables is integrated.Through histograms,their sales patterns are directly understood,highlighting the most popular vegetables.Upon analyzing each vegetable category,it becomes evident that their sales data do not conform to normal distributions.Therefore,Spearman correlation coefficients are calculated,revealing strong correlations between certain categories,such as aquatic roots and edible fungi.A line chart depicting the top ten selling vegetables indicates a noticeable periodicity.Traditional fitting methods struggle to adequately model the sales of each vegetable category and their relationship with cost-plus pricing.To address this,additional factors such as holidays,weeks,and months are incorporated using techniques like random forest regression.This approach yields cost-plus pricing dependence curves that better capture the relationship,while effectively managing noise.Regarding sales volume prediction,the original data displays significant volatility,necessitating the handling of outliers using the threshold method.For missing data,linear interpolation is employed to mitigate the impact of continuous missing values on prediction accuracy.Subsequently,Adam-optimized long short-term memory(LSTM)networks are utilized to forecast incoming quantities for the next seven days.By extrapolating from normal sales volume,market capacity is estimated,allowing for additional sales through discount strategies.This framework has the potential to increase original income by 1.1 times.

OPTIMAL PRICING STRATEGY TO REDUCE FUEL CONSUMPTION IN ELECTRICITY GENERATION WITH SMART METER

It has been widely recognized that the efficiency of a thermal power system can be improved by technological advancement of electricity generation and manipulation of electricity consumption. The smart meter enables two-way communication between the customers and the electricity generation system. The electricity generation system uses price incentive （i.e. a higher price in the peak period and a lower price in the off-peak period） to shift part of demands from peak to off-peak period under the smart grid environment. Given the fact that fuel consumption in each period is a strictly increasing convex function of power output, we propose two-period and multi-period pricing strategies, and study the effect of different pricing strategies on reducing fuel consumption.

Dynamic Pricing Model of E-Commerce Platforms Based on Deep Reinforcement Learning

With the continuous development of artificial intelligence technology,its application field has gradually expanded.To further apply the deep reinforcement learning technology to the field of dynamic pricing,we build an intelligent dynamic pricing system,introduce the reinforcement learning technology related to dynamic pricing,and introduce existing research on the number of suppliers(single supplier and multiple suppliers),environmental models,and selection algorithms.A two-period dynamic pricing game model is designed to assess the optimal pricing strategy for e-commerce platforms under two market conditions and two consumer participation conditions.The first step is to analyze the pricing strategies of e-commerce platforms in mature markets,analyze the optimal pricing and profits of various enterprises under different strategy combinations,compare different market equilibriums and solve the Nash equilibrium.Then,assuming that all consumers are naive in the market,the pricing strategy of the duopoly e-commerce platform in emerging markets is analyzed.By comparing and analyzing the optimal pricing and total profit of each enterprise under different strategy combinations,the subgame refined Nash equilibrium is solved.Finally,assuming that the market includes all experienced consumers,the pricing strategy of the duopoly e-commerce platform in emerging markets is analyzed.

Dual Channel Pricing of Large Fresh Chain Stores Considering Distribution Costs under Split Quotation

After large fresh food chain stores have opened online channels,distribution costs are a key factor affecting consumers'online buying behavior,which affects dual-channel pricing.This paper studies the dual-channel pricing strategy of large fresh food chain stores on the premise of dividing the quotation,considering the consumer's acceptance of online channels and the sensitivity to distribution costs.The research found that the optimal pricing of online channels is lower than that of retail channels.The optimal pricing of online channels is positively correlated with the acceptance of online channels,and negatively correlated with the sensitivity of consumer distribution costs.Moreover,after retailers have opened online channels,the market scale has expanded compared with traditional retail channels.Finally,numerical experiments are used to analyze the influence of various influencing factors on retailers'decision-making.

Price leadership strategy or branding strategy:an empirical test of indigenous Chinese exporters

The effects of price leadership strategies and branding strategies on the export performance of indigenous Chinese exporters with a focus on developing country markets and developed country markets are examined based on the principles of strategy-environment co-alignment and marketing segmentation theory. Findings suggest that when focusing on developing country markets, the use of a branding strategy is more likely to enhance export performance. When focusing on developed country markets, neither the use of a price leadership strategy nor the use of a branding strategy enhances export performance. Finally, theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed.

PRICING STRATEGIES IN A SUPPLY CHAIN WITH MULTI-MANUFACTURER AND A COMMON RETAILER UNDER ONLINE REVIEWS

Online reviews play an important role in consumer purchasing behavior when shopping online, and in turn affect pricing strategies of sellers. We consider a supply chain consisting of three competitive manufacturers and an e-tailer, which sells multiple substitutable products procured from different manufacturers. Considering reviews in terms of quality information and fit information, we study the effect of online reviews on consumers＇ purchasing decisions as well as pricing strategies of manufacturers and the e-retailer. Through modelling customer choice with online reviews based on neo-Hoteling model and solving Stackelberg game composed by manufacturers and e-tailer, we obtain the optimal equilibrium prices of manufacturers and the e-tailer. And we distinguish two kinds of effect from online reviews： effect of the opinion bias in product quality and effect of the match informativeness. Furthermore, compared to the case without online reviews, we find online reviews improve a manufacturer＇s optimal wholesale price, profit as well as the retailer＇s optimal retailing price, when the adjusted quality revealed by reviews is high; however, online reviews can improve the e-tailer＇s optimal profit, only when the standard deviation of products＇ quality revealed by reviews is large enough. Last, we get that the increase of competing manufacturers＇ quantity would change the dominance between two kinds of effect from reviews on supply chain members.

Optimal Pricing Strategies for a Manufacturer and a Value-Adding Retailer in a Dual-Channel Environment

In this paper,we study a supply chain that consists of a manufacturer and a value-adding retailer that sell a product to customers through dual channels,i.e.a traditional channel(TC)and an online channel(OC).Observing that in practice,the manufacturer may or may not offer an OC guide price to the retailer and/or act as the leader in the supply chain,we discuss and compare two practical pricing strategies,with and without an OC guide price,under two different power configurations based on which member of the supply chain acts as the leader.Our results show that if the manufacturer does not provide a guide price,the retailer might/might not set a higher TC price than the two OC prices,depending on the level of migration effectiveness and the potential market demand.However,if the manufacturer does provide a guide price,the retailer will always charge a higher TC price than the guide price(or the two OC prices)when the retailer acts as the leader.Moreover,we show that the two players in the supply chain might or might not prefer the pricing strategies with an OC guide price.Our results also indicate that migration effectiveness harms the retailer's profit,and the manufacturer may benefit from mild competition between the two channels.Finally,we show that regardless of whether the manufacturer chooses to offer an OC guide price or not,both the manufacturer and the retailer prefer to act as the follower for high migration effectiveness and the profit of the supply chain will increase when the retailer acts as the leader for low migration effectiveness.

HOW DOES THE RETAILER MAKE PRICING DECISION WHEN CONSUMERS HAVE JUSTICE REFERENCE PRICE

A series of studies demonstrate that consumers have fairness judgments about the retailer＇s price which will impact their shopping decisions. Thus, it is necessary for the retailer to take consumers＇ fairness concerns into account when setting his pricing policies. We assume that when the retailer＇s price is lower than a consumer＇s justice reference price, the consumer is likely to sense a positive price unfairness that will lead to increased consumer utility, and when the retailer＇s price is higher than a consumer＇s justice reference price, the consumer is likely to sense a negative price unfairness-that will have a negative effect on consumer utility. According to the information conditions of the consumers＇ justice reference price, the retailer should consider three situations： certain information, random information and partial information. In all situations, we show that the retailer has a unique optimal pricing strategy. Finally, through numerical examples, we find that our distribution-free policies perform almost the same as the results under the distributions that maximize the entropy. Our results reveal that it is important for the retailer to consider consumers＇ fairness concerns, otherwise he may suffer losses when Pc is very small.

Pricing and observational learning in crowdfunding:The moderate effect of target

This paper studies pricing and observational learning in a reward-based crowdfunding campaign context.The creator sets a funding target and uses different pricing strategies in order to make the project successful:menu price and other static or dynamic price strategies,such as low price,high price,and intertemporal price.In a sequential game,the creator needs to choose the optimal pricing strategy with or without information disclosure.With information disclosure,the follower can infer the quality of the product by observing the former’s decision.We found that this observational learning effect is a double-edged sword and is positively moderated by the target when different pricing strategies are adopted:on one hand,it will benefit the creator from an intertemporal pricing strategy or high price strategy if the target is very high;on the other hand,it has an adverse effect on the profit if menu price(high price)is adopted when the target is relatively(very)low.In some conditions,menu price(high price)without information disclosure will be optimal when the target is relatively(very)low.

EXPLORING THE VALUE OF INSTALLED BASE:PRICING INFORMATION GOODS UNDER VALUE DEPRECIATION AND CONSUMER SOCIAL LEARNING

While last decade has witnessed a rapid growth of digital economy, there is limited understanding in literature on whether the conventional wisdom on pricing strategy still holds for information goods. On one hand, information goods, similar to durable goods, are subject to value depreciation; on the other, they differ from traditional goods in negligible marginal cost and the sensitivity to social influences. This paper develops a two-period, game-theoretic model to investigate optimal pricing strategy of information goods. On one dimension, two different depreciation mechanisms （self- and time-depreciation） are considered; on the other, two prevalent pricing schemes （perpetual licensing and subscription-fee models） are studied. We obtain closed-form solutions in all scenarios. Our findings suggest that vendors of time-depreciation information goods should adopt subscription-fee model to attract early adopters and exploit social influences, while the vendors of self-depreciation information goods should strategically balance between depreciation and social influences. Interestingly, as social influences become strong enough, the difference between pricing schemes diminishes and the tradeoff between candidate strategies vanishes. We also extend the model to static pricing in which the vendor commits to future price. We discover that the superiority of subscription-fee model might be overturned under static pricing. Our results above also imply that building consumer feedback and interaction systems could be helpful for minimizing the potential loss of a suboptimal pricing scheme.

Valuation and Hedging Strategy of Currency Options under Regime-Switching Jump-Diffusion Model

The main purpose of this thesis is in analyzing and empirically simulating risk minimizing European foreign exchange option pricing and hedging strategy when the spot foreign exchange rate is governed by a Markov-modulated jump-diffusion model. The domestic and foreign money market interest rates, the drift and the volatility of the exchange rate dynamics all depend on a continuous-time hidden Markov chain which can be interpreted as the states of a macro-economy. In this paper, we will provide a practical lognormal diffusion dynamic of the spot foreign exchange rate for market practitioners. We employing the minimal martingale measure to demonstrate a system of coupled partial-differential-integral equations satisfied by the currency option price and attain the corresponding hedging schemes and the residual risk. Numerical simulations of the double exponential jump diffusion regime-switching model are used to illustrate the different effects of the various parameters on currency option prices.

Optimal Sales Promotion in a Supply Chain Using Consignment Contract under Stochastic Demand

Sales promotion is getting more and more prosperous in Chinese cross-border e-commerce platforms where the demand is uncertain.However,most existing literature on promotion strategies is focusing on deterministic demand.In this paper,we propose a game-theoretical model under multiplicative stochastic demand to investigate the pricing,inventory quantity and sales promotion strategies for a supply chain which is consisted of one cross-border distributor and one capital-constrained retailer under a consignment contract.We obtain the equilibrium outcomes under stochastic demand,and find that the optimal price and promotion investment depend on demand uncertainty under endogenous inventory decisions.With exogenous unlimited inventory,the retailer prefers owing promotion right when the elasticity of price and promotion is small enough and its capital is sufficient,while the distributor always prefers to control sales promotion.With endogenous inventory quantity,the sensitivity of demand to price is influence by the demand uncertainty.The retailer prefers to decide the promotion when the price-elasticity is small,while the distributor prefers to decide the promotion under large promotion-elasticity.And the intensity of optimal sales promotion made by retailers may be stronger than that when the distributor owns the promotion right,which depends on the elasticity of price and promotion.More importantly,it is always better for consumers when the distributor reserves the promotion right as a lower optimal retailing price is offered.

Service-Cost-Sharing Contract Design for a Dual-Channel Supply Chain with Free Riding

This paper considers a dual channel supply chain,where a manufacturer sells a single product through his/her online channel and a traditional retailer,who provides consumers with pre-sale services.The manufacturer's online channel may free-ride the retailer's pre-sale service,which reduces the retailer's desired effort level,and hence may hurt the manufacturer's and the overall supply chain performance.Under both Manufacturer-and Retailer-Stackelberg settings,we study how the manufacturer designs a service-cost-sharing(SCS for brevity)contract to enhance the retailer's service effort level,and how free riding influences two members'optimal decisions.We design an algorithm for determining the two members’optimal decisions under each setting.The three main findings are found:(i)In the Manufacturer-Stackelberg setting,the SCS contract can enhance the retailer's service effort level and eliminate the negative impact incurred by free riding,but can't in the Retailer-Stackelberg setting,(ii)Under the SCS contract,the smaller the fraction of service cost the retailer is requested to share,the more detrimental to the retailer it will be under certain conditions.That is,the phenomenon called"counter-profit cost-sharing"appears,(iii)Both players like to act as a leader if the price competition between the two channels is not relatively very fierce,otherwise they both like to act as a follower.