Service and Price Competition When Customers Are Naive

We consider a system of two service providers each with a separate queue. Customers choose one queue to join upon arrival and can switch between queues in real time before entering service to maximize their spot utility, which is a function of price and queue length. We characterize the steady‐state distribution for queue lengths, and then investigate a two‐stage game in which the two service providers first simultaneously select service rates and then simultaneously charge prices. Our results indicate that neither service provider will have both a faster service and a lower price than its competitor. When price plays a less significant role in customers’ service selection relative to queue length or when the two service providers incur comparable costs for building capacities, they will not engage in price competition. When price plays a significant role and the capacity costs at the service providers sufficiently differ, they will adopt substitutable competition instruments: the lower cost service provider will build a faster service and the higher cost service provider will charge a lower price. Comparing our results to those in the existing literature, we find that the service providers invest in lower service rates, engage in less intense price competition, and earn higher profits, while customers wait in line longer when they are unable to infer service rates and are naive in service selection than when they can infer service rates to make sophisticated choices. The customers’ jockeying behavior further lowers the service providers’ capacity investment and lengthens the customers’ duration of stay.     

考虑战略顾客行为带预算约束的多产品报童问题

动态定价策略的广泛使用使得越来越多的顾客呈现战略性的特点,即顾客在决定购买时机时不仅会考虑当前的价格是否超过其心理预留价格,同时也会考虑到等到降价时再购买产品的可能性,从而延迟购买决策。研究了一类考虑顾客战略行为且带有预算约束的多产品报童问题,引入理性预期均衡分析,得到了报童和战略顾客双方静态博弈时的理性预计均衡解,并进一步分析了数量承诺对于均衡数量和均衡价格的影响。分析了最优解的性质并给出了求解算法,最后通过数值算例对模型的结论进行了验证。     

Quality‐Speed Competition in Customer‐Intensive Services with Boundedly Rational Customers

We consider a system in which two competing servers provide customer‐intensive services and the service reward is affected by the length of service time. The customers are boundedly rational and choose their service providers according to a logit model. We demonstrate that the service provider revenue function is unimodal in the service rate, its decision variable, and show that the service rate competition has a unique and stable equilibrium. We then study the price decision under three scenarios with the price determined by a revenue‐maximizing firm, a welfare‐maximizing social planner, or two servers in competition. We find that the socially optimal price, subject to the requirement that the customer actual utility must be non‐negative, is always lower than the competition equilibrium price which, in turn, is lower than the revenue‐maximizing monopoly price. However, if the customer actual utility is allowed to be negative in social optimization, the socially optimal price can be higher than the other two prices in a large market.     

平台企业竞争有效性及投资策略性效果研究

平台企业通常会对其各类市场实施交叉补贴。本文建立一般模型,证明了当双边市场中存在交叉补贴情形的平台企业竞争,将导致受补贴市场的补贴程度下降。这一结论打破了传统理论中竞争降低市场价格,提高市场效率的判定。同时,以降低成本投资为例,研究表明了平台企业策略性效果与传统理论研究的不同:受补贴市场的降低成本的投资,可能令竞争对手的利润增加,而且对自身利润的间接效应与对竞争对手的利润策略性影响可能方向不一致。     

竞争环境下基于顾客策略行为的易逝品动态定价研究

在两个提供相同易逝品的零售商折线竞争下,从顾客策略行为出发,研究竞争环境下两零售商的动态定价策略。首先建立供大于求的情况下两零售商动态定价模型,给出了均衡价格满足的条件,并探讨了在一些特殊情况下均衡价格的特性。然后将这一模型扩展到供小于求的情形,探讨模型的求解方法。算例分析了在折线竞争模式下零售商在面对顾客策略行为时,如何动态的决定价格。同时发现,在供大于求的情况下,顾客策略行为导致零售商的收益降低;在供小于求的情况下,一定程度的顾客策略行为可以使零售商获得更高的期望收益。     

Multi‐Product Quality Competition: Impact of Resource Constraints

We study a multi‐product firm with limited capacity where the products are vertically (quality) differentiated and the customer base is heterogeneous in their valuation of quality. While the demand structure creates opportunities through proliferation, the firm should avoid cannibalization between its own products. Moreover, the oligopolistic market structure puts competitive pressure and limits the firm's market share. On the other hand, the firm has limited resources that cause a supply‐side fight for adequate and profitable production. We explicitly characterize the conditions where each force dominates. Our focus is on understanding how capacity constraints and competition affect a firm's product‐mix decisions. We find that considering capacity constraints could significantly change traditional insights (that ignore capacity) related to product‐line design and the role of competition therein. In particular, we show that when the resources are limited, the firm should offer only the product that has the highest margin per unit capacity. We find that this product could be the diametrically opposite product suggested by the existing literature. In addition, we show that for intermediate capacity levels, whereas the margin per unit capacity effect dominates in a less competitive market, proliferation and cannibalization effects dominate in a more competitive market.