The pricing strategy of dual-channel supply chain with risk-averse agents and heterogeneous preference consumers

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the pricing strategy and the impact of agents' risk preference in a dual-channel supply chain in which both agents are risk-averse.Design/methodology/approachThe authors make use of the mean-variance (MV) method to measure the risk aversion of the agents and apply Stackelberg game to obtain the optimal strategies of the proposed models. Furthermore, the authors compare the optimal strategies with that in the benchmark model in which no agent is risk-averse.FindingsThe authors find that the pricing decisions can be divided into four categories according to the risk attitudes of the agents: the decisions that are independent of two agents' risk attitudes, the decisions that depend on only one agent’s risk attitude (i.e. depend on only manufacturer's risk attitude and depend on only retailer's risk attitude) and the decisions that depend on both agents' risk attitudes. In addition, the authors find that the retail price will be lower and the wholesale price in most cases will be lower than that in the benchmark when at least one agent's risk control is effective; the demand will be always increasing as long as one agent's risk control is effective. Furthermore, compared to the benchmark, a win-win strategy (i.e. Pareto improvement) for the supply chain members can be obtained in a certain range where the agents' risk controls are appropriate.Originality/valueThis research provides a theoretical reference for the managers to make the pricing decisions and the risk control in dual-channel supply chains with heterogeneous preference consumers.

A Discrete Choice Experimental Approach to Understand Sports Event Tourists’ In-Stadium Beer Consumption Preferences

While drinking beer is an important component of sports event tourists’ ceremonial behaviors, there is surprisingly limited information regarding what features of beer service offerings at professional sporting events are most preferred. Using a sample of sports event tourists attending South Korean professional baseball games, the main purpose of this study is to provide an opportunity for improved knowledge regarding how spectators show their willingness to pay for in-stadium beer services. Applying a discrete choice experiment, we also intend to identify spectators’ heterogeneous preference systems, which vary depending on their levels of everyday alcohol use. Results suggest that respondents place great importance on serving temperatures and waiting time in line for purchasing beer at concession stands. The two drinker groups segmented based on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test scores show different tastes for beer services. Several management implications are discussed to improve in-stadium entertainment and prevent alcohol-fueled misbehaviors.

On the Integration of CP-nets in ASPRIN

Conditional preference networks (CP-nets) express qualitative preferences over features of interest.A Boolean CP-net can express that a feature is preferable under some conditions, as long as all other features have the same value.This is often a convenient representation, but sometimes one would also like to express a preference for maximizing a set of features, or some other objective function on the features of interest.ASPRIN is a flexible framework for preferences in ASP, where one can mix heterogeneous preference relations, and this paper reports on the integration of Boolean CP-nets.In general, we extend ASPRIN with a preference program for CP-nets in order to compute most preferred answer sets via an iterative algorithm.For the specific case of acyclic CP-nets, we provide an approximation by partially ordered set preferences, which are in turn normalized by ASPRIN to take advantage of several highly optimized algorithms implemented by ASP solvers for computing optimal solutions.Finally, we take advantage of a linear-time computable function to address dominance testing for tree-shaped CP-nets.

Investigating Peer and Sorting Effects within an Adaptive Multiplex Network Model

Individuals have a strong tendency to coordinate with all their neighbors on social and economics networks. Coordination is often influenced by intrinsic preferences among the available options, which drive people to associate with similar peers, i.e., homophily. Many studies reported that behind coordination game equilibria there is the individuals’ heterogeneity of preferences and that such heterogeneity is given a priori. We introduce a new mechanism which allows us to analyze the issue of heterogeneity from a cultural evolutionary point of view. Our framework considers agents interacting on a multiplex network who deal with coordination issues using social learning and payoff-driven dynamics. Agents form their heterogeneous preference through learning on one layer and they play a pure coordination game on the other layer. People learn from their peers that coordination is good and they also learn how to reach it either by conformism behavior or sorting strategy. We find that the presence of the social learning mechanism explains the rising and the endurance of a segregated society when members are diverse. Knowing how culture affects the ability to coordinate is useful for understanding how to reach social welfare in a diverse society.

Using Market Segmentation Analysis to Identify Consumer Preferences for Fresh Peach Attributes

Consumer preferences for attributes of fresh peach fruit in the United States are largely unknown on a national basis. We used a choice experiment to explore market segmentation based on consumer heterogeneous preference for fruit attributes including external color, blemish, firmness, sweetness, flavor, and price. We collected the data using an online survey with 800 U.S. consumers. Using a latent class logit model, we identified three segments of consumers differing by different sets of preferred quality attributes: experience attribute-oriented consumers, who valued fruit quality (48.8% of the sample); search attribute-oriented consumers, who valued fruit appearance (33.7% of the sample); and balanced consumers, who considered search attributes and experience attributes but who valued each in a balanced way (17.5% of the sample). Each group demonstrated differentiated demographics and purchasing habits. The results have important marketing implications for peach breeders and suppliers.