题目：When to Offer Upgrades?

报告人：新加坡管理大学 王宇 博士

报告时间：2018年3月26日(周一)上午9:00

地点：管理楼管阶二

报告摘要:

In this paper, we build a capacity and revenue management model from a consulting project. We consider a firm that sells multiple product models corresponding to multiple classes of demand (customers). Each class of customers requests for one particular product model, and the firm can offer customers free upgrades to more expensive models when there is insufficient stock of the preferred ones. However, customers may not accept the upgrades due to their preferences on their desired models. Customers arrive over time. The firm needs to decide whether or not to offer upgrades upon the arrival of each individual customer. We formulate the problem using a Markov decision process model and prove that the optimal profit function is anti-multimodular. Based on this property, we prove that the structure of the optimal upgrade policy can be described by dynamic thresholds that depend on the inventory levels of all products. Importantly, we show that, with the possibility that customers would reject upgrades, it is optimal to offer upgrades before the stockout of the desired models. Offering upgrades only after stockout could lead to significant profit loss.

报告人简介：

王宇博士现任新加坡管理大学李光前商学院助理教授，在Manufacturing & Service Operations Management等顶级管理类期刊发表多篇论文，目前主要从事供应链管理、制造与服务运营管理、生产和库存系统以及排队论等方面的研究。