Sharif Digital Repository

Pricing and Revenue Management in systems that offer services in subscription as well as pay-per-use format simultaneously is one of the most significant challenges in service companies. One of the main criteria in these systems is keeping the loyal customers and attracting more subscribers. Pricing and capacity allocation are decisions to be made in such systems considering customer’s behavior. In this research, we consider a service system with subscription and pay per use options to analyze the price and capacity allocation based on customer’s bahvior. The Loss Aversion theory is assumed for customer’s behavior and its effect on decisions is analyzed. A greedy algorithm as well as a smart... 

With the growth of the urban population and the increase in private car ownership, negative implications of transportation, such as traffic congestion and environmental pollution has increased. A good solution to this problem is development of traffic infrastructures. However, it is not sufficient by itself and better management strategies for solving these problems are needed. One of the related approaches, is high occupancy toll lane. The main purpose of this study is modeling user’s mode choice behavior in the presence of high occupancy toll lane and pricing some highway lanes in Tehran. Another important purpose of this study is to find affective factors that have an influence on users... 

Inappropriate use of the transportation networks is one of the causes of network congestion. Toll pricing is one of the traffic management tools to mitigate delay and congestion by guiding traffic flow to proper time and route. Efficient use of network facilities is one of transportation planners’ goal and highways are one of the most important facilities in a transportation network. In this study, we investigate the highway toll pricing problem in order to reduce total travel time for the users. We introduce four different strategies to collect toll from highway users. Direct solution methods for large networks faced with the problem of solving time. In this regard, some heuristics methods... 

In this study, the problem of pricing and inventory control for non-instantaneous deteriorating items with two separate warehouses is considered. One warehouse is owned and the other one is rented. The rented one has a higher holding cost due to better preserving facilities. In the literature, a common assumption is that the deterioration of items starts at the instant of their arrival, while in fact the majority of goods have a short time span for maintaining quality or original condition, during which no deterioration occurs. For non-instantaneous deteriorating items, the common assumptions may lead to the overvaluation of the total annual relevant inventory cost. In the present study a... 

In this research, we consider an assemble-to-order production system which accepts order for multi-products. Demand is stochastic and price-dependent. We also consider a sale index that links demand of each period to the previous periods demand. The variety of products which use common parts makes this revenue management system complicated. Furthermore, since the price of each product can have an effect on other products demand, it causes price dependency among them. We model the problem within the framework of dynamic programming approach to maximize discounted profit of the firm during a finite and multi-period horizon. We develop an integrated system of pricing and production decisions... 

In this research, we consider a made-to-order production system which receives orders for a single product. The demand is stochastic and price-dependent. We also consider a sale index that links the demand of each period to the demands as well as to the quality of the previous periods. The variety of quality levels and its effect on the amount of orders make this revenue management complicated. Furthermore, the price of each product is related to its quality and sales index. Furthermore, reference price causes the model to be significantly more complicated. We model the problem within the framework of dynamic programming approach to maximize the discounted profit of the firm during a... 

Nowadays, the necessity of management tools for controlling the ever increasing congestions in transportation networks has been increased. Pricing is one of these tools for mitigating congestions in transportation networks. In this regard, different pricing models have been developed for transportation networks. By considering the advancement in technologies and possibility of recording the vehicles’ traveled distance in the tolling areas, the amount of toll each user pays could be a nonlinear function of the distance traveled inside tolling areas. As a result, the generalized travel cost of each path may not be link-wise additive; therefore, the resulting shortest path problem cannot be... 

Although inventory control under discrete demand in dynamic quantities and time intervals are very common in reality, existing literature has largely ignored them. In this thesis, we investigate the inventory control decisions in a two echelon supply chain. The vendor supplies a product to several retailers, buying discrete quantities in pre-determined time intervals. The order quantity and order cycles for each retailer can be different from others. We have developed a new efficient algorithm to find the optimal ordering policy involves the scheduling and the order quantity of vendor to his supplier to minimize his cost function in infinite time horizon. Moreover, we have designed a revenue... 

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... 

The integration of pricing and production planning decisions has attracted many researchers and industry professionals, as these decisions directly affect the highest and lowest levels of a company. In this thesis, an integrated production-price problem for two complementary products is studied. Regarding the negative correlation of the two products, different sales strategies, including unbundling, pure bundling and mixed bundling, are used and three distinct models are proposed for each one. In the models, real and important assumptions such as production capacity limitation, shared resources, and the cost of preparation are considered. The goal of solving these models is to determine the... 

Fast penetration of internet among people caused serious changes in businesses and helped them to migrate from classic systems to modern trades. Beside considerable benefits of this evolution like decreasing costs, increasing efficiency, increasing reliability, expanding market and ease of customer relationship management, some risks endanger life a business. Retailers as the last ring if a business chain, mainly encounters a hardship of risks. In this study, after identifying and prioritizing possible risks demand risk identified as the most important point to focus. After analyzing this risk, we try to propose mitigation solutions  

The transportation is one of the important components in the economies of different countries. In the maritime transportation network, the demand is usually not balanced in different routes, and this imbalance results to accumulation of containers in a node. In order to sustain the problem, firms have to reposition empty equipment from a surplus location to a shortage location, which causes the problem of “Empty Repositioning Problem”. In this study, pricing strategies in one transportation market with two locations are considered; while there is ERP problem in issue. The problem is solved by Bertrand game method. The research is divided into two parts of the monopoly network and the duopoly... 

In this study we developed an analytical model to delve into the behavior of participants in the market of kidney in Iran. We get health as a good which not only elevates the utility of any individual, it add more years to each individual longevity. We find out that ESRD patients who are in serious need of receiving a new kidney will never postpone buying kidney in case of having the price fixed in all periods.We found out that the waiting time in queue of receiving market is a u-shape function in which there is a minimum. We proved that the price making the queue minimum is definitely bigger than the market clearance market. Accordingly, despite all the unfair and immoral view toward... 

In this study, a smart grid algorithm based on pricing and by considering a model in the electricity market is presenting, which is focused on reducing the cost of production for the supplier as well as increase the utility for the electricity consumer. The algorithm has been also modeling by considering multiple suppliers. The model has been designing by taking the home subscribers in to account and to increase their social welfare. The difference between the following developing model compared to the other ones, which are presented so far, is the consideration of the competition between suppliers and the real-time pricing conditions. In fact, in this model, the price of electricity has... 

Market heterogeneity is an essential element in the strategic decision making of firms. Today, differences in urban structures, product varieties, and information availability have created new heterogeneities that deviate from the ones in the classic literature of marketing and industrial organization. Thus a new perspective is needed for analyzing the firms' decisions in these markets. In this thesis, we study the effect of heterogeneous markets on the pricing, location, quality, and product line introduction strategy of a firm to find the optimal reaction of a firm entering these markets. In this regard, we first assume that consumers are not only located at different places in the market... 

The present study proposes a pricing model for manufacturing and customer support companies which is carried out in the form of multi-level programming. In this model, the manufacturer is considered as the leader and supporting companies as followers. In fact, manufacturer sets up the price level for its customer support first and then according to this price level, customer support companies choose their products and specify the level of after-sales services and the prices. The purpose of this study is to provide insight into the analysis of the after-sales services in a supply chain. The results can be notable for managers in order to demonstrate the impact of different strategies of... 

It has always been a challenge for retailers to plan which of the available goods will be displayed to the customer and at what price for each. In practice, the limited storage capacity of goods, the limited capacity of shelves, or the limited capacity of displaying goods on a web page in online stores may make it more difficult to decide on the above issues. These issues have been addressed in the literature when demand for goods is clear or a good estimate of demand can be obtained based on sales data. The purpose of this study is to investigate multi period Assortment planning, pricing and inventory planning with respect to the limited capacity of storage and display of goods in a... 

The tourism industry stands as one of the most pivotal sectors in the modern global economy, with hotels constituting one of its largest components. Concurrently, hotel management represents one of the most significant commercial activities worldwide. Among the crucial responsibilities of hotel management is the challenge of room allocation to guests seeking accommodation. In this study, we investigate the problem of assigning hotel rooms to guests. To achieve this, we first collect reservation requests from guests and execute the allocation process based on these requests. This procedure is facilitated through mathematical modeling with the objective of maximizing the number of accepted... 

Determining a promotion planning is a critical decision for retail managers. This plan should decide on the amount and duration of promotions for each product in a way that maximizes profit compared to a non-promotion scenario. In this study, the promotion optimization problem in a retail environment is formulated as a non-linear integer programming problem. The objective function is to maximize profit from product sales during the sales period. The problem also includes several business-related constraints that limit the number of promotions. In this study, a reinforcement learning approach, specifically Deep Q-Network, has been used to solve the mathematical model. The implementation... 

The present research investigates the conjunction of two areas of pricing and negotiation techniques to find a relationship between price and other key factors such as quality, quantity, time, etc. and observe the overall effect of these factors on how to design and implement negotiations over price in B2B environment. The research presents a model to describe the process of negotiation and applies quantitative methods to rank negotiable scenarios. This set of scenarios, then is sorted in a triangular model of negotiation strategy and is used as a roadmap for negotiation. Furthermore, researcher evaluates effective tactics and their implementation to drive negotiation sessions based on...