Login

Multi-period pricing for perishable products : uncertainty and competition

Show simple item record

dc.contributor.advisor Georgia Perakis. en_US
dc.contributor.author Zhang, Lei (Lei Kevin) Massachusetts Institute of Technology en_US
dc.contributor.other Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computation for Design and Optimization Program. en_US
dc.date.accessioned 2007-10-19T20:31:20Z
dc.date.available 2007-10-19T20:31:20Z
dc.date.copyright 2006 en_US
dc.date.issued 2006 en_US
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39208
dc.description Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Computation for Design and Optimization Program, 2006. en_US
dc.description Includes bibliographical references (p. 107-109). en_US
dc.description.abstract The pricing problem in a multi-period setting is a challenging problem and has attracted much attention in recent years. In this thesis, we consider a monopoly and an oligopoly pricing problem. In the latter, several sellers simultaneously seek an optimal pricing policy for their products. The products are assumed to be differentiated and substitutable. Each seller has the option to set prices for her products at each time period, and her goal is to find a pricing policy that will yield the maximum overall profit. Each seller has a fixed initial inventory of each product to be allocated over the entire time horizon and does not have the option to produce additional inventory between periods. There are no holding costs or back-order costs. In addition, the products are perishable and have no salvage costs. This means that at the end of the entire time horizon, any remaining products will be worthless. The demand function each seller faces for each product is uncertain and is affected by both the prices at the current period and past pricing history for her and her competitors. In this thesis, we address both the uncertain and the competitive aspect of the problem. First, we study the uncertain aspect of the problem in a simplified setting, where there is only one seller and two periods in the model. en_US
dc.description.abstract (cont.) We use ideas of robust optimization, adjustable robust optimization, dynamic programming and stochastic optimization to find adaptable closed loop pricing policies. Theoretical and numerical results show how the budget of uncertainty, the presence of a reference price, delayed resource allocation, and feedback control affect the quality of the pricing policies. Second, we extend the model to a multi-period setting, where the computation becomes a major issue. We use a delayed constraint generation method to significantly increase the size of the problem that our models can handle. Finally, we consider the pricing problem in an oligopoly setting. We show the existence of solution for both the best response subproblem and the market equilibrium problem for all of the models we discuss in the thesis. We also consider an iterative learning algorithm and illustrate through simulations that an equilibrium pricing policy can be computed for all of our models. en_US
dc.description.provenance Made available in DSpace on 2007-10-19T20:31:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 85842906.pdf: 4184673 bytes, checksum: e10f702e903468d8e50bac462b655f98 (MD5) 85842906-MIT.pdf: 4184483 bytes, checksum: 99ec0f514433c2cadaa3beedb4e9ba2c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 en
dc.description.statementofresponsibility by Lei Zhang. en_US
dc.format.extent 109 p. en_US
dc.language.iso eng en_US
dc.publisher Massachusetts Institute of Technology en_US
dc.rights M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission. en_US
dc.rights.uri http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582
dc.subject Computation for Design and Optimization Program. en_US
dc.title Multi-period pricing for perishable products : uncertainty and competition en_US
dc.type Thesis en_US
dc.description.degree S.M. en_US
dc.contributor.department Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computation for Design and Optimization Program. en_US
dc.identifier.oclc 85842906 en_US

Files in this item

Files Size Format
Preview, non-printable (open to all) 4.184Mb application/pdf
Full printable version (MIT only) 4.184Mb application/pdf

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record

Search DSpace@MIT


Advanced Search

Browse

My Account

Links