Sharif Digital Repository

Seasonal Products are a group of products with a limited life time. If seasonal products are not sold during a specified time, they have to be sold at a salvage price which is close to zero. Although one can find many studies in the literature regarding pricing of this type of products in order to maximize the profit, none of them have considered the simultaneous effect of both advertising and pricing. The objective of this paper is to introduce an integrated model of dynamic pricing and advertising for seasonal products. The advertisement is classified into two main categories; to advertise a specific type of product and to advertise the brand of the company. To obtain the mentioned goal,... 

In this thesis, an approach is developed to obtain an optimal pricing policy for chartered flights. In order to do so, a model within the framework of dynamic programming is presented and its main structure is also analyzed. Since in real world cases the dimension of this model happens to be very large, a solution method is developed by “Q Learning” technique. This is an appropriate approach in approximate dynamic programming and reinforcement learning. Analysis is carried out under two different assumptions regarding demand, namely “linear-deterministic” and probabilistic demand for transition probabilities. An exact solution for deterministic demand case is developed. Furthermore, for... 

Nowadays network marketing has promoted marketing, sale and customer relationship altogether. On the other hand, due to the growth of internet, network marketing has become a powerful and attractive channel that can be utilized alongside the other traditional channel. Pricing and network marketing structure influences on distribution system coordination and networker motivation in network marketing. This thesis provides a framework to study the integration of network marketing with retailers in a dual channel distribution system and provide the pattern for determining the different variables of distribution systems, including of product price in diverse channels, commission payment to... 

Taking into account the impact of advertising on the reference price, we propose an optimal pricing strategy for supply chains in competitive industries subject to reference price effect. Most of researches do not consider the competition among supply chains. An industry with two competing supply chains is considered. Each supply chain includes a manufacturer who sells his/her product via a retailer. There are two types of structures: integrated and decentralized (it is assumed that the relation in a chain is Manufacturer– Stackelberg). Each manufacturer offers wholesale price to his/her retailer anticipating the retailer’s order quantity. In addition, the retailers choose their retail... 

Nowadays the evaluation startups has been difficult and this problem increases the likelihood of misunderstanding price of company's stock. Companies need precise evaluation in different steps of their development. during fund-raising, To make the investors’ share determine, the value of companies should be calculated because the investors’ share equals the ratio of new investment to the value of company after investment. Besides, during the merge or possession of a company, to determine the value of the deal or the share of the dealers, we need to evaluate value of the company. to evaluate the Intrinsic value of company, we need to know potential revenue streams, financial statements, the... 

One of the lesser-known issues in the modeling literature of assortment optimization issues is the assortment optimization for reusable products, which is an issue in various areas, including offering parking space, renting cloud computing systems resources, and rental of fashion products, etc.In this issue, we are faced with a high diversity product rental store that has a customer in each period. The seller offers a limited set of products depending on the customer demand and the inventory in hand. He can decide to rent the product or leave the system without renting the product. In case of renting the products by the customer, he may return them until the end of this period or keep them... 

In this thesis, we examine different forecasting methods to predict volatility in financial markets. Tehran Exchange Price Index (TEPIX) is adapted to forecast in short and long term periods. TEPIX is the most important index in Tehran Stock Market which is officially reported daily. Autoregressive Integrated Moveing Average models (ARIMA), Generalaized Autoregressive Heteroskedastic models (GARCH) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are used for forecasting TEPIX. Spectral Analysis is also regarded as a completely new approach in financial mathematics to forecast TEPIX in short and long term periods. We consider different criteria to compare the performance of different methods of... 

In this thesis, three popular option pricing models, Black and Scholes Model, Heston Model and Bates Model are compared to each other in economic crises situation. We carry out a comparison between different option pricing models based on S&P500 Index options during 2008. First these data are classified regarding to moneyness and maturity time in nine categories and then the performance of the models, exerting two indexes, In Sample performance and Out Of Sample performance are compared in every category. To reach the prices via In Sample performance index, structural parameters of each model are estimated with the data of each day. Then, daily prices are computed by models and compared with... 

Predicting the price that has the least error and can provide the best and highest accuracy has been one of the most challenging issues and one of the most critical concerns among capital market activists and researchers. Therefore, a model that can solve problems and provide results with high accuracy is one of the topics of interest among researchers. In this project, using time series prediction models such as ARIMA to estimate the price, variables, and indicators related to technical analysis show the behavior of traders involved in involving psychological factors for the model. By linking all of these variables to stepwise regression, we identify the best variables influencing the... 

Emission control, especially Carbon Monoxides (CO) as one of the major by-products of combustion processes, is one of the most serious challenges in burning waste-gases with high amounts of humidity and Carbon Monoxide. We investigated an oil waste-gas incinerator serving to a bitumen production line located in Pasargad Oil Company, Shazand, Arak, Iran. The aforementioned incinerator was criticized seriously for its high CO emissions. We were requested to find a solution to reduce the undesirable CO emission from that. Following the environmental standards, there is an upper limit of 150 ppm for the CO produced by an industrial waste oil incinerator. To present an inclusive solution for such... 

This study presents an efficient decision making model for tourism services managers. Decisions of bundle pricing and ordering for a perishable multi-product jointly are considered in a multiple period horizon to maximize the expected profit of the firms. The retailer uses bundling strategy for products pricing to give customers discount when buying a bundle of products. The discretionary sales is incorporated which authorizes managers to save inventory for satisfying future demand even if some present demand is lost.
For solving the problem in deterministic case, we apply modified-genetic algorithm and in stochastic case, sequential quadratic programming (SQP), stochastic simulation and... 

Iran has the third largest reservoirs of oil and the second largest reservoirs of gas and has the greatest hydrocarbon reservoirs worldwide. Considering the fact that production of oil is highly dependent on gas injection, Iran is facing a great challenge in determining proper strategy for consuming natural gas. Due to the lack of proper strategy form the point of view of economical as well as scientific evaluation in political and social aspects, it has resulted in weakening Iran’s place in international markets and also reduction of oil wells’ productions.In this study, after a review of relevant literature, characteristics of oil and gas projects effective on modeling them were... 

In this thesis, first, the problem of valuation of a portfolio is considered. This portfolio consists of some risky assets and real options written on them, with capital budgeting constrain. Three major elements of this problem are: portfolio, capital budgeting and real options. After reviewing the relevant literature, we develop a framework for managerial decisions about risky assets, by applying of Option Valuation Theory and Stochastic Dynamic Programming. The objective is to fill the gap in the valuation literature and propose a model that considers three aspects of investment decisions– portfolio approach, capital budgeting and real options- simultaneously. The proposed model... 

In this thesis, we focus on some internal organization issues of the supply chain; in particular, we analyze some network design problems which are typical of producer companies. The aim is to optimize the flow of goods through the literature distribution network, from the plants where the goods are produced (supply points) to the demand points, which are essentially distributors such as wholesalers or retailers. The system addresses a class of distribution network design problems, which is characterized by multiple product families, a central manufacturing plant site, multiple central warehouses and distribution center, and retail outlets (customer zones) which demand multiple units of... 

The purpose of this thesis is to develop an e-Business B2B system for a company. We review e-Business concepts, its requirements as well as the obstacles to implement it. Then, the various kinds of e-Business, their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. We study the outcome of e-Business system implemented in two Iranian companies. Then, we design an information system for one company. Indeed, this system presents the process of purchasing and sale representing the transactions between the company and its sale representatives. This information system is designed within Microsoft Access environment. This system can make this company capable of entering international markets by... 

The problem of developing optimal pricing and inventory allocation strategies has been extensively studied over the past two decades. However, most of the literature in this area assumes that customers are myopic price-takers, and do not respond to firm pricing strategically. In this study, we present review on a class of problems that consider a firm selling a finite number of items over a finite time horizon facing stochastic demand and a group of customers who act strategically by timing their purchases. We first review the optimal purchasing policy for the customers, and pricing policy for the firm that is the best response policy to the customer’s strategic behavior. Then we present a... 

In electrical energy market, an economic game is running in which, power generating companies compete with each other in order to determine their suitable strategies and gain the highest possible profit. The literature shows the researchers actually use different algorithms to determine their suitable strategies but not Nash equilibrium method. These algorithms can not guarantee that the strategic equilibrium points can be found. In this research, the classic Nash method is used to determine GENCOs appropriate strategies and is simulated on some well known models (Cournot, Supply function equilibrium (SFE) and Bertrand), combined energy and reserve markets will be studied. The results of... 

In this investigation, two pricing models are extended with continuous and periodic price settings through dynamic programming approach. In this problem, we intend to sell a perishable product in a finite horizon with no salvage value through an advance-sale system. The objective function in these models is maximizing expected value of firms’ revenue by setting optimal prices in pricing periods. Demand is assumed to be stochastic time and price-dependent and also customers might cancel their reservations by paying a penalty before delivery. Structural properties of the optimal policy are investigated for both models and the concavity and inventory monotonicity properties are proved for both.... 

In this study, four pricing models in a supply chain are developed. The first model includes a retailer. The second model also includes a retailer. However in this model we apply the learning technique to update the stochastic demand. In the third model, we consider a supply chain consisting of a retailer and a manufacturer. Finally, in the fourth model we consider a supply chain consisting of a retailer and a manufacturer and like the second model; we apply the learning technique to update the stochastic demand. In all models we assume that a single product is sold in a monopoly market. In this study we seek to simultaneously determine decisions about production, pricing and ordering to... 

Today, the importance of growth and its relation with the survival of the organization is well-known by all managers. However, path selection in this area seems extremely vague and difficult. The present theoretical research, conducted to help further clarify growth dimension characteristics, aims at considering possible growth paths for firms as well as examining required capabilities for each path. In this research, firm growth was studied from three different angles: value chain, product system complexity and the market. A relatively comprehensive categorization was made of organizational capabilities namely technological, managerial and networking and it was examined within dynamic and...