Real-Time Pricing Optimization for Ride-Hailing Quality of Service

When demand increases beyond the system capacity, riders in ride-hailing/ride-sharing systems often experience long waiting time, resulting in poor customer satisfaction. This paper proposes a spatio-temporal pricing framework (AP-RTRS) to alleviate this challenge and shows how it naturally complements state-of-the-art dispatching and routing algorithms. Specifically, the pricing optimization model regulates demand to ensure that every rider opting to use the system is served within reason-able time: it does so either by reducing demand to meet the capacity constraints or by prompting potential riders to postpone service to a later time. The pricing model is a model-predictive control algorithm that works at a coarser temporal and spatial granularity compared to the real-time dispatching and routing, and naturally integrates vehicle relocations. Simulation experiments indicate that the pricing optimization model achieves short waiting times without sacrificing revenues and geographical fairness.

Preference-Based Revenue Optimization for App-Based Lifestyle Membership Plans

The demand for a product is rooted in the consumers’ needs and preferences. Therefore, a pricing optimization model will be more valid if the demand function is represented under this basic notion. A preference-based revenue optimization model for an app-based lifestyle membership program is developed and solved in this research. The model considers competitor products and cannibalization effect from products in other fare-class, where both are incorporated using a preference-based demand function. The demand function was derived through a randomized first choice simulation that converts individual utility values into personal choices based on the random parameter logit model. Cannibalizing products are considered as competing products in the simulation scenario. In the pricing optimization, two and three fare classes based on the membership period are considered. The corresponding pricing optimization problem is a mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem with a solution-dependent objective function. Using enumeration, the three-fare-class optimal prices of Rp420,000, Rp300,000, and Rp60,000 for 12-month, 6-month, and 1-month membership, respectively, are better than those of the two-fare-class. Under this policy, the estimated total revenue is Rp30.56 billion, 41.74% greater than that of the current condition.

Research on the Route Pricing Optimization Model of the Car-Free Carrier Platform Based on the BP Neural Network Algorithm

The car-free carrier platform is a product of the rapid development of the modern logistics industry and has a vital strategic value for promoting the construction of a country’s comprehensive transportation. However, due to the unreasonable platform pricing model, the industry is currently in a bottleneck period. In order to solve this problem, we established a gray correlation model to calculate the degree of correlation between each characteristic index and platform pricing based on the massive historical transaction data of a certain platform and performed K-means clustering on the results to discover the main factors affecting platform pricing. Based on the abovementioned results, we created a pricing optimization model based on the BP neural network, with the structure of 8-13-1 to predict the freight pricing of the order and test the prediction results. The test shows that the goodness of fit (R2) of the predicted value is close to 1, and the prediction error range is less than 3.7%, which proves the accuracy and effectiveness of the BP neural network model and provides an effective reference for the optimization of the pricing model of the car-free carrier platform.

Congestion pricing optimization for shared transport

This project includes the analysis of transportation systems by mathematically modeling the collective decision making of drivers via Nash games. This paper considers two types of traffic pricing models which capture the implication of pricing on shared transport. Both models follow a game theoretic framework and capture the perspective of private shared transport companies that aim to increase their profit while improving social welfare or users’ time cost. The first model was established for users who vary their routing choices but not their transportation modes when the demand levels are fixed. The second model is more appropriate for companies with users who optimize both their routing and choice of transportation based on the pricing policy of the system where demands are elastic. Two pricing policies can be determined by convex formulations of optimal system traffic assignment problems on simple networks with different origins and destinations. The models also show how pricing affects road users’ decisions under different parameter settings. The numerical results confirmed formulation feasibility and gave insight on how the company can have an impact on both their revenue and time cost by modifying their pricing scheme.