Pricing strategy and product quality design with platform-investment

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>With the development of business, more consumers are quality sensitive and improving the product quality becomes particularly important. We mainly discuss two investment strategies: retailer-investment and platform-investment. Compared with non-investment case, only if consumer sensitivity is not too high, it is profitable for the retailer to select retailer-investment. When both retailer-investment and platform-investment are viable, the choice of investment mechanism depends on the profit-sharing ratio. Particularly, if the ratio is within a certain range, the optimal investment strategy is platform-investment, achieving a triple-win outcome. Besides, to effectively alleviate the contradiction between the retailer's moral hazard problem and the sustainable value-added effect of platform-investment, we further research the contract term. These results give us some meaningful management inspirations in investment mechanism.</p>

The efficiency of major industrial enterprises in Sichuan province of China: A super slacks-based measure analysis

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>The main objective of this research is to measure the efficiency of 397 major industrial enterprises in Sichuan province of China in 2013.To this end, we employed DEA super slacks-based measure (Super-SBM) model for performance evaluation of 397 major manufacturing firms.The empirical results show that 21 of the 397 enterprises operate efficiently, and the average efficiency score of the analyzed enterprises is only 0.15. The enterprise with the highest efficiency score is 96.15% higher than the average score, which is the benchmark enterprise of operational efficiency. Among the selected sample enterprises, 5.29% of the industrial enterprises are highly efficient in operation. It was also noticed that the average efficiency score of pharmaceutical firms was the highest among all industrial firms with a mean score of 0.75, which is 80% higher than the overall average score of all industries. While the average efficiency of manufacturing of chemical raw materials and chemical products was the lowest with a mean score of 0.39. Results of sensitivity analysis show that profit has a great impact on the efficiency score of special equipment manufacturing firms, but a relatively weak impact on the firms which manufacture computers, communications, and other electronic equipment. The effect of export delivery value on efficiency score is not obvious.</p>

Low carbon joint strategy and coordination for a dyadic supply chain with Nash bargaining fairness

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>In the paper, fairness concern criterion is utilized to explore the coordination of a dyadic supply chain with a fairness-concerned retailer (acting as a newsvendor), who is committed to low carbon efforts. Two models are developed for stochastic demand disturbances in the forms of multiplicative case and additive case, respectively. Firstly, the optimal joint decision of the retailer and the supply chain are proposed in two scenarios, i.e., decentralized decision and the centralized decision. Secondly, in order to realize channel coordination, the contract of revenue sharing combined with the mechanism of low-carbon cost sharing is designed. Moreover, the influences of the retailer's fairness concern and bargaining power on the joint decision and the contract parameters are also investigated. Finally, numerical examples are given to illustrate the theoretical results and some suggestions to supply chain management are also provided. The results show that the revenue sharing contract can make the supply chain achieved coordination with the cost sharing mechanism of low-carbon efforts. Furthermore, the optimal low-carbon effort level and ordering quantity decrease in terms of fairness-concerned parameter and Nash bargaining power parameter, which increases in unit cost. However, the optimal pricing makes the opposite change.</p>

Pricing and quality decisions in a supply chain with consumers' privacy concern

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>This study considers a supply chain consists of one manufacturer produces a product with a quality level and sells it through one retailer. A stylized model is developed to investigate the impacts of consumers' privacy concerns on pricing, quality decisions, and profitability through the relationship between product quality and personal information. When consumers' privacy concern is considered, the product quality level, the wholesale price, the payoffs of the manufacturer and retailer, and consumer surplus decrease with the personal information loss, whereas the selling price increases if this loss is low. Our results also show that the retailer prefers to charge a high selling price if the information benefit and the personal information loss are low, or the information benefit is relatively high. Moreover, a "win-win-win" outcome can be achieved among the manufacturer, retailer, and consumers if the personal information loss is sufficiently low. In the case of quality-differentiated products, however, although the manufacturer improves the product quality level, the wholesale prices are increased if the information benefit and the personal information loss are low, or the information benefit is high.</p>

Optimal portfolios for the DC pension fund with mispricing under the HARA utility framework

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>This paper studies the optimal portfolio selection for defined contribution (DC) pension fund with mispricing. We adopt the general hyperbolic absolute risk averse (HARA) utility to describe the risk performance of the pension fund managers. The financial market comprises a risk-free asset, a pair of mispriced stocks, and the market index. Using the dynamic programming approach, we construct the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation and obtain the explicit expressions for optimal portfolio choices with two methods. Finally, numerical analysis is presented to illustrate the sensitivity of the optimal portfolios to parameters of the financial market and contribution process. <b>200</b> words.</p>

Optimal recycling price strategy of clothing enterprises based on closed-loop supply chain

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>More and more garment enterprises begin to pay attention to the importance of recycling, take the corresponding recycling strategy to recycle garment products and remanufacture, forming a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC). In reality, recycling is a complex system, the recycling strategy of clothing brands will not only affect the reverse channel of closed-loop supply chain, but also affect the consumer demand of forward channel, and then affect the profit of supply chain. In order to solve this problem, we propose a CLSC composed of a manufacturer, a retailer and a collector, establish three different Stackelberg leadership models, and derive the optimal recycling strategy. Our results show that consumers' sensitivity to the recycling price will affect the optimal decision of supply chain members. The increase of the recycling market is not always beneficial to the profits of supply chain members. By comparing the profits of the three models, it is found that the retailer leadership model is the most effective scenario of CLCS. The results of this paper provide a reference for garment enterprises to formulate recycling strategies.</p>

Optimal pricing and ordering strategies for dual-channel retailing with different shipping policies

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>In this paper, considering dual-channel retailing (online channel and offline channel), we study the pricing and ordering problem under different shipping policies. In this research, we mainly consider three shipping policies: without shipping price (OSP), with shipping price (WSP) and conditional free shipping (CFP). Based on the principle of maximum utility, we firstly obtain the probability of demand for the online and offline channels and further model the pricing and ordering problem under the three shipping policies. Further, avoiding the curse of dimensionality, the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) method is employed to solve the problem to obtain the optimal pricing and ordering policy. Finally, we conduct some numerical experiments to compare the optimal pricing and ordering quantity under the three different shipping policies and reveal some managerial insights. The results show that the conditional free shipping policy is better than the other two policies, and stimulates the increase of demand to gain more profit.</p>

An adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic for multi-commodity two-echelon vehicle routing problem with satellite synchronization

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>In considering route optimization from multiple distribution centers called depots via some intermediate facilities called satellites to final customers with multiple commodities request, we introduce the Multi-Commodity Two-Echelon Vehicle Routing Problem with Satellite Synchronization (MC-2E-VRPSS). The MC-2E-VRPSS involves the transportation from multiple depots to satellites on the first echelon and the deliveries from satellites to final customers on the second echelon. The MC-2E-VRPSS integrates satellite synchronization constraints and time window constraints for satellites on the two-echelon network and aims to determine cost-minimizing routes for the two echelons. The satellite synchronization constraints which trucks from the multiple depots to some satellites need to be coordinated guarantee the efficiency of the second echelon network. In this study, we develop a mixed-integer programming model for the MC-2E-VRPSS. For validating the model formulation, we conduct the computational experiments on a set of small-scale instances using GUROBI and an adaptive large neighborhood search (ALNS) heuristic which we develop for the problem. Furthermore, the computation experiments for evaluating the applicability of the ALNS heuristic compared with large neighborhood search (LNS) on a set of large-scale instances are also conducted, which proved the effectiveness of the ALNS.</p>

Trace minimization method via penalty for linear response eigenvalue problems

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>In various applications, such as the computation of energy excitation states of electrons and molecules, and the analysis of interstellar clouds, the linear response eigenvalue problem, which is a special type of the Hamiltonian eigenvalue problem, is frequently encountered. However, traditional eigensolvers may not be applicable to this problem owing to its inherently large scale. In fact, we are usually more interested in computing some of the smallest positive eigenvalues. To this end, a trace minimum principle optimization model with orthogonality constraint has been proposed. On this basis, we propose an unconstrained surrogate model called trace minimization via penalty, and we establish its equivalence with the original constrained model, provided that the penalty parameter is larger than a certain threshold. By avoiding the orthogonality constraint, we can use a gradient-type method to solve this model. Specifically, we use the gradient descent method with Barzilai–Borwein step size. Moreover, we develop a restarting strategy for the proposed algorithm whereby higher accuracy and faster convergence can be achieved. This is verified by preliminary experimental results.</p>

B2C online ride-hailing pricing and service optimization under competitions

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>B2C online ride-hailing is to provide customers with anytime, anywhere and on-call ride services by professional vehicles and professional drivers. How to maintain good service quality and reasonable pricing under competition is of importance to a platform. In this paper, we will integrate pricing and service together to maximize the profit of a platform through Nash game theory. Specifically, we will establish the models for there scenarios: the demand market competition under decline of ride demand, the supply market competition under surge of ride demand, and the coexistence of demand and supply market competition for stable ride demand. Then, the Nash equilibriums are derived for the three models which are corresponding to minimize ride price, optimize quality of efforts and maximize profit. Our results uncover that the driver's incentive amount is conducive to the profit of both platform and the drivers for the case of demand market competition. The platforms and drivers achieve the highest profit under supply market competition, and the strategy through minimizing price and maximizing service can effectively adjust the balance between market supply and demand.</p>