OPTIMAL AND INCENTIVE COMPATIBLE PRICING FOR HETEROGENEOUS PERIODS  

作　　者：Jian CHEN Nan ZHANG Shuo HUANG 

机构地区：[1]Research Center for Contemporary Management, Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Universities, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

出　　处：《Journal of Systems Science and Systems Engineering》2008年第1期50-65,共16页系统科学与系统工程学报（英文版）

基　　金：the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos.70621061,70518002,and 70601018

摘　　要：This paper studies a service firm whose business time can be divided into several periods, each providing different value to customers. Heterogeneous service is a major reason resulting in imbalances between supply and demand. Since customers differ in their degree of impatience, firrns can use differential pricing mechanisms to optimize their objectives and match supply with demand in each period, by inducing customers to choose different periods. We study two types of firrns, an internal firm, the objective of which is to maximize the system＇s （including the f＇nan and all the customers） total net value, and a commercial firm, which aims to optimize its own profit. Though impatience factors are customers＇ private information, for each type of firm, we derive the optimal incentive compatible pricing policy, under which all the coming customers will follow the firm＇s assignment, that is, patient customers will buy the service in high-value periods, but their waiting time will be longer, while impatient customers will enter into the low-value periods, but they will be compensated by shorter waiting times. Furthermore, in the internal firm, we also prove that this mechanism enables the decentralization of decisions, while maintaining centralized system-wide optimality. Numerical analysis shows that when there is sufficient capacity, the internal firm does not always need to set lower prices than the commercial firm in every period.This paper studies a service firm whose business time can be divided into several periods, each providing different value to customers. Heterogeneous service is a major reason resulting in imbalances between supply and demand. Since customers differ in their degree of impatience, firrns can use differential pricing mechanisms to optimize their objectives and match supply with demand in each period, by inducing customers to choose different periods. We study two types of firrns, an internal firm, the objective of which is to maximize the system＇s （including the f＇nan and all the customers） total net value, and a commercial firm, which aims to optimize its own profit. Though impatience factors are customers＇ private information, for each type of firm, we derive the optimal incentive compatible pricing policy, under which all the coming customers will follow the firm＇s assignment, that is, patient customers will buy the service in high-value periods, but their waiting time will be longer, while impatient customers will enter into the low-value periods, but they will be compensated by shorter waiting times. Furthermore, in the internal firm, we also prove that this mechanism enables the decentralization of decisions, while maintaining centralized system-wide optimality. Numerical analysis shows that when there is sufficient capacity, the internal firm does not always need to set lower prices than the commercial firm in every period.

关 键 词：Delay cost QUEUING differential pricing information asymmetry incentive compatibility 

分 类 号：F714[经济管理—产业经济]