考虑战略顾客行为时的供应链性能分析与协调

动态定价策略的广泛应用使得越来越多的顾客具有了战略性,战略顾客会根据产品在销售期内的价格路径确定最优购买时机,零售商则根据顾客的购买行为确定订货数量和销售价格.研究了双方静态博弈时的理性预期均衡解和零售商进行数量承诺时的情形.研究表明:理性预期均衡时的最优销售价格、最优存货数量和最优期望利润分别小于标准报童模型的情形;数量承诺时的最优存货数量小于理性预期均衡时的最优存货数量;最优期望利润则大于理性预期均衡时的最优期望利润,并且在一定条件下可能会大于标准报童模型的最优期望利润,战略顾客行为的存在对零售商可能有利.最后分析了在分散式供应链中如何利用收入分享契约和数量折扣契约实现供应链协调.     

The Impact of a Task Clarification and Feedback Intervention on Restaurant Service Quality

Customer service is a key aspect of restaurant success, as performance has shown a reliable positive relationship with customer retention. However, waitstaff performance may deteriorate, as income from gratuities is often unrelated to service quality. The present study investigated the effectiveness of an intervention consisting of task clarification and task-specific feedback on restaurant service tasks and observed the relationship between task completion and gratuities. Three adult women servers participated during their regular working shifts at a local dine-in restaurant. Initially customer service task completion was low (36% on average across participants). Performance increased immediately following the introduction of the intervention, and all participants maintained 87.5%–100% task completion. Correlational analyses found that gratuities were unrelated to performance and may thus pose a problem for performance maintenance. Implications relating to feedback and payment schedules are discussed.     

Advance Selling by a Newsvendor Retailer

Retailers often face a newsvendor problem. Advance selling helps retailers to reduce demand uncertainty. Consumers, however, may prefer not to purchase in advance unless given a discount because they are uncertain about their valuation for the product in advance. It is then unclear whether or when advance selling to pass some uncertainty risk to consumers is optimal for the retailer. This paper examines the advance selling price and inventory decisions in a two‐period setting, where the first period is the advance selling period and the second is the selling (and consumption) period. We find that an advance selling strategy is not always optimal, but is contingent on parameters of the market (e.g., market potential and uncertainty) and the consumers (e.g., valuation, risk aversion, and heterogeneity). For example, we find that retailers should sell in advance if the consumers' expected valuation exceeds consumers' expected surplus when not buying early by a certain threshold. This threshold increases with the degree of risk aversion but decreases with stock out risk. If the degree of risk aversion varies across consumers, then a retailer should sell in advance if the probability for a consumer to spot buy is less than a critical fractile.     

An Objective Review of the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management

Abstract

This article presents an objective review and analysis of every article published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management (JOBM) between 1987 and 1997. The purpose of this review was to replicate and extend the research conducted by Balcazar, Shup-ert, Daniels, Mawhinney, and Hopkins (1989) by providing an objective review and analysis of the second decade of JOBM publications. In doing so, we analyzed several noteworthy trends and patterns occurring within the second decade of the Journal and compared them with the first decade, where applicable. Additionally, we discussed the extent to which the Journal has continued to meet its objectives, and we offered recommendations for future JOBM publications. In general, we found evidence that the Journal has continued to grow in meaningful ways, and we report data that indicate it continues, to some extent, to meet its original objectives. Author affiliation remains largely in academe, although there is evidence that more collaboration is occurring with non-academic authors. The variety of topics addressed by JOBM researchers continues to grow, and the frequency of work simulation studies has increased as well. We also identified areas where future JOBM research could be improved. In particular, more studies should include information on the reliability and social validity of the independent and dependent variables, cost/benefit analyses, and follow-up data.     

Pricing and Replenishment of Competing Perishable Product Variants under Dynamic Demand Substitution

I consider pricing and ordering decisions faced by a retailer selling a perishable product with a two‐period shelf life over an infinite horizon. In the first period, the product is “new”; in the next, it becomes “old.” The new product is perceived by customers to have a higher quality than the old product. Every period, the retailer makes three decisions: prices for the new and old products and how much new product to order. I first show, with some simple cases, that demand uncertainty can make the sale of the old product profitable. I then consider a more realistic case with dynamic demand substitution among customers. I recognize that the retailer's decisions may be constant or may vary across different periods, under different contexts. For instance, varying the price of the new product can sometimes be difficult due to the negative impact it generates among customers. I find that (i) the benefit obtained from selling the old product with constant decisions is much higher than the benefit from allowing all the decisions to vary; (ii) the former benefit increases with a higher procurement cost, a higher quality of the new product, and higher demand volatility; however, the latter benefit is non‐monotone in these parameters; (iii) most of the latter benefit can be obtained by just changing the order quantity; and (iv) as the inventory of the old product increases, when all the decisions vary, the optimal price of the new product may increase or decrease.     

An Analysis of the Commonality and Type of Preintervention Assessment Procedures in the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management (2000–2015)

We reviewed all issues of the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management (JOBM) from 2000 through 2015 to identify the percentage of empirical articles, which utilized some form of preintervention assessment. In addition, we categorized five types of assessment used and compared the number of assessments conducted in each category. Finally, because assessment is considered to be particularly important in the subdiscipline of behavioral safety (McSween, 2003), and prior research has not examined the commonality of assessment in this area, we also analyzed the frequency and type of assessment procedures used in behavioral safety and compared this to the use of assessment in OBM in general. Results indicated that 28% of the empirical articles in JOBM used some form of preintervention assessment. Indirect methods were the most often used type of assessment. In addition, 48% percent of the articles in JOBM, which employed a safety-related dependent variable, included some form of assessment. The most frequently used type of assessment in behavioral safety was historical assessment. Based on these data, the use of some form of preintervention assessment in OBM appears to be occurring with some regularity, and assessment in behavioral safety is more common relative to assessment in OBM in general.     

重要股东市场行为引导下的利益趋同与壕沟防守效应

重要股东的市场行为不仅会对股价造成直接影响,还因其影响公司成长、与其他投资者的利益相冲突而倍受证券理论与实务界的关注。本文以存在增减持行为的A股上市公司为样本,按主成分分析法构建成长性指标,通过对重要股东增减持股票与公司成长性间的多元回归分析,研究其市场行为在多因素综合影响下对利益趋同与壕沟防守效应的催化作用。实证结论显示:重要股东增持总会强化利益趋同、减持强化壕沟防守;第一大股东持股比例越多,壕沟防守效应越明显,前十大股东持股比例越多,利益趋同效应越明显,体现了股权制衡与股权控制的平衡关系。     

A heuristic approach to in-season capacity allocation in a multi-product newsvendor model

Based on an actual problem, we develop and test two heuristics for optimizing the newsvendor’s response to new in-season demand information for a multi-product single-period problem. In this model, in addition to the quantities produced prior to the beginning of the selling season, the newsvendor can produce additional quantities of some products after the selling season begins. Sales data of all products is updated daily, and using these updates, the newsvendor can test if the quantities already produced are still optimal. If the newsvendor finds that the actual demand of a product up to a point in time indicates that the quantity already produced is too small, then the product becomes a candidate for an incremental production quantity. In Heuristic I, we fix the pre-season production quantities to those that are optimal for the classic newsvendor model. In Heuristic II, because the newsvendor may have some recourse during the selling season, we allow for reductions in the pre-season production quantities from the optimal classic newsvendor model production quantities. Using a simulation experiment, we show that even under an unbiased forecast, both heuristics result in higher profit, with Heuristic II outperforming Heuristic I. The increase in profits from using the heuristics increases significantly with the number of products for which the forecast is biased. In addition, the improvements in profits decrease significantly as the lead time and the penalty for late production increase.     

具有线性交易成本的耐用性设备在线租赁策略分析

在设备寿命周期内,购买和使用结束后出售旧设备需要支付交易成本,交易成本与设备价格具有线性关系。分析显示:对于具有线性交易成本的耐用性设备在线租赁问题,如果不考虑在设备使用结束后出售旧设备的残值以降低成本,从租赁模式转换到购买模式的在线策略的转换时机,总是晚于考虑在设备使用结束后出售旧设备的在线策略;如果不考虑购买和使用后出售的交易成本,在线策略名义上的竞争比小于实际竞争比。     

金融资产投资对创新投入的挤出效应研究

基于我国经济“脱实向虚”的宏观背景，文章研究了微观企业金融资产投资对创新投入的消极影响，以及融资融券制度在其中的作用。以2007-2015年A股上市公司为样本的实证检验发现，金融资产投资阻碍了企业的创新投入。其机制在于，金融资产投资不仅引入了较多的外部风险，而且加剧了创新投入面临的融资约束，进而对创新投入表现为显著的挤出效应。以融资融券制度的实施为契机，进一步研究发现，融资融券业务通过增加上市公司的风险与融资约束，最终加剧了金融资产投资对创新投入的挤出效应。因此，应防止上市公司过度从事金融资产投资，同时对融资融券制度进行优化，促使资本市场更好地服务实体经济。     

A Choice‐Based Dynamic Programming Approach for Setting Opaque Prices

Opaque pricing is a form of pricing where certain characteristics of the product or service are hidden from the consumer until after purchase. In essence, opaque selling transforms a differentiated good into a commodity. Opaque pricing has become popular in service pricing as it allows firms to sell their differentiated product at higher prices to regular brand loyal customers while simultaneously selling to non‐brand loyal customers at discounted prices. We use a nested logit model in combination with logistic regression and dynamic programming to illustrate how a service firm can optimally set prices on an opaque sales channel. The choice model allows the characterization of consumer trade‐offs when purchasing opaque products while the dynamic programming approach allows the characterization of the optimal pricing policy as a function of inventory and time remaining. We compare optimal prices and expected revenues when dynamic pricing is restricted to daily price changes. We provide an illustrative example using data from an opaque selling mechanism ( Hotwire.com ) and a Washington DC‐based hotel.     

Competitive markdown timing for perishable and substitutable products

We model as a duopoly two firms selling their fixed stocks of two substitutable items over a selling season. Each firm starts with an initial price, and has the option to decrease the price once. The problem for each firm is to determine when to mark its price down in to maximize its revenue. We show that the existence and characterization of a pure-strategy equilibrium depend on the magnitude of the increase in the revenue rate of a firm when its competitor runs out of stock. When the increase is smaller than the change in the revenue rate of the price leader when both firms are in stock for all of the three possible scenarios, neither firm has the incentive to force its rival to run out of stock and if a firm marks its price down after the season starts, its inventory runs out precisely at the end of the season. When the increase is larger than the change of the price leader׳s revenue rate in one particular scenario, waiting until its rival runs out of inventory may be an equilibrium strategy for the larger firm even though this may lead to leftover inventory for itself. In other cases, there may be no pure-strategy equilibrium in the game. In certain regions of the parameter space, a firm׳s revenue may be decreasing in its starting inventory which shows that a firm may be better off if it can credibly salvage a portion of its inventory prior to the game. While most of our analysis is for open-loop strategies, in the final part of the paper, we show that the open-loop equilibrium survives as an equilibrium when we consider closed-loop strategies for an important subset of the parameter space.     

The Effects of Task Clarification and Group Graphic Feedback on Early Punch-In Times

Task clarification in the form of workplace policy guidelines coupled with weekly graphic feedback of group punch-in times on the staff clock were presented to waitstaff, cooks, cash register clerks, dishwashers, buffet attendants, and hourly assistant managers in a restaurant sub-franchise. Clocking in early dropped from 130 min during baseline to 62 min per week during intervention. A 1-week return to baseline resulted in 189 min of clocking in early by restaurant personnel. The use of task clarification and group feedback reduced company expenses without reductions in job satisfaction or increased stress.     

公开或隐藏未来市场价格对新品预售的影响研究

预售是新产品上市前，商家允许消费者提前预定产品的一种销售手段。本文以新产品预售为背景，建立了商家同时销售新旧两代产品时的预售模型，先对消费者最优购买策略进行了分析，在此基础上，分两种情况，即商家在预售阶段公开或隐藏新品未来市场价格，研究了商家最优预售价格折扣和最优订购量。最后，通过数值仿真分析了影响新品预售策略和商家收益的一些因素。结果表明，商家在预售阶段公开新品未来市场价格可以获得更高期望收益。     

Dynamic pricing in the presence of consumer inertia

Customer behavior modeling has gained increasing attention in the context of dynamic pricing. As an important behavior phenomenon, consumer inertia refers to consumers' inherent tendency of purchase procrastination and may induce consumers to wait even when immediate purchase is optimal from an objective perspective. This paper studies a dynamic pricing problem for a monopolist firm selling perishable goods to consumers who may be influenced by inertia. We formulate this problem using the finite-horizon dynamic programming approach and derive the optimal dynamic pricing policy. We demonstrate that consumer inertia produces negative effects on firms' expected revenues and optimal prices, which are monotonically decreasing in both inertia depth and breadth. Through numerical illustrations, we further show that the marginal effects of inertia depth on optimal prices and expected revenues are decreasing, whereas the marginal effects of inertia breadth are increasing. Finally we propose some suggestions for firms to influence the level of consumer inertia.     

需求学习下考虑顾客策略行为的供应链决策

顾客策略行为对企业的经营绩效带来了巨大的负面影响, 本文基于供应链背景, 探讨需求学习应对顾客策略行为的作用与价值。构建了由单一制造商、单一零售商和一组顾客群组成的两周期分散式供应链系统的博弈模型, 将顾客划分为短视型和策略型两种类型。采用数理模型和数值分析, 研究了需求学习对于供应链的定价决策、订货决策及整体绩效的影响, 得到如下主要研究结论:第一, 无论面对何种类型的顾客, 零售商均偏好需求学习获取需求更新信息;第二, 面对短视顾客时, 制造商偏好于不获取更新信息, 而当顾客为策略型时, 制造商偏好于获取更新信息;第三, 需求学习有助于提高零售商和供应链系统的利润, 特别当面对策略型顾客时, 需求学习带来的利润增值更大。以上研究结论表明, 需求学习可以有效地缓解顾客策略行为的负面影响, 提高企业的运营绩效。     

A Prompting Procedure for Increasing Sales in a Small Pet Store

Abstract

A simple prompting procedure involving index cards was used to increase suggestive selling by the owner/operator of a small pet grooming business. Over a year of baseline data revealed that no sales prompts were given and few pet products were sold. When the owner was prompted by an index card to ask customers if they wanted to purchase pet products, sales tripled and increased four-fold by the end of the year. This study is part of an increasing interest in the behavioral analysis of consumer choice and addresses both management and marketing concerns by demonstrating how a simple, well-replicated prompting procedure can modify a key employee behavior that in turn changes customer behavior, and results in an important organizational outcome.     

目标取向和过时感知能力对两类销售行为的影响

销售努力和适应性销售是两类最基本的销售行为,探寻这两种销售行为的决定因素是销售管理领域的热点研究问题.基于教育心理学和销售力管理的相关研究成果,探讨3种目标取向与两类消费行为的关系,并通过引入过时这一概念,探究不同目标取向导致不同程度的销售努力和适应性销售的内在机理.通过对9家公司160名销售人员的问卷调查,运用结构方程模型,考察销售人员的不同目标取向与销售行为和销售力过时感知能力以及销售力过时感知能力与销售行为的关系,并重点检验销售力过时感知能力对目标取向与销售行为关系的中介效应.实证研究结果表明,目标取向对销售力过时感知能力和销售行为均有显著影响,销售力过时感知能力也会显著影响销售行为,销售力过时感知能力在目标取向与销售行为的关系中起到一定的中介作用.     

Some Things I've Learned About Changing Behavior in a Fortune 100 Company

Abstract

The present study used a sign to increase the number of pushed in chairs within 2 sections of an undergraduate educational psychology course at a university in the southeastern United States. This may have increased the opportunity for students with mobility limitations to select from a wider variety of seating. After posting a sign, at least 20% more chairs were pushed in across each section. Following removal of the sign, chairs continued to be pushed in at a level consistent with intervention. Compared with other studies that have used signs to effect change, the fact that the same population of users was exposed to the sign may explain the discrepant results in the literature regarding level of behavioral persistence after signs had been withdrawn. Cost efficiency, support for using a behavioral prompt, and future research is discussed.     

公平感对供应链成员定价决策影响的研究

本文研究公平感对由一个供应商和一个零售商组成的二级供应链中的定价决策的影响,其中供应商决定批发价格,零售商在接受供应商批发价格合同之后决定零售价格,市场需求受到零售价格的线性影响.采用管理实验方法得出,首先,供应商的批发价格和零售商的零售价格均分别低于完全理性假设下的均衡解;供应商是利他性的,即,乐于看到零售商收益的增加,并且,供应商认为零售商是完全理性的,即零售商的决策目标是最大化自身收益;然而,零售商却是刻毒性的,即乐于看到供应商收益的减少.其次,批发价格的变异度大于零售价格的,即供应商决策的难度大于零售商的.给管理者的启示是:供应商应考虑零售商的刻毒性的特征,降低批发价格,以提高零售商接受供应商所提批发价格的概率;此外,还应该为供应商提供辅助决策手段,以降低批发价格的变异度,提高决策的准确性