How to deal with consumers who group to request a discount?

We investigate operations impacts of consumer‐initiated group buying (CGB), whereby consumers voluntarily form buying groups to negotiate bulk deals with retailers. This differs from regular purchasing whereby consumers visit retailers individually and pay posted prices. Upon the visit by group consumers, a retailer decides to forgo or satisfy their demand in its entirety. Turned down by a retailer, group consumers continue to visit other retailers. In the case where their group effort fails to conclude a deal, some group consumers switch to individual purchasing provided they receive a non‐negative utility by doing so. Even after a successful group event, the group consumers who forgo the event out of utility concern may switch to individual purchasing as well. Retailer competition, group size, and the chance that group consumers switch to individual purchasing upon unsatisfaction are crucial to how retailers adjust operations to deal with CGB. With retailer competition, the rise of CGB results in every consumer paying the same reduced price when group size is small but makes group consumers pay more than by purchasing individually when group size is large. This has mixed consequences on the profits for retailers in both absolute and relative terms.     

Flexible capacity strategy in an asymmetric oligopoly market with competition and demand uncertainty

This article studies flexible capacity strategy (FCS) under oligopoly competition with uncertain demand. Each firm utilizes either the FCS or inflexible capacity strategy (IFCS). Flexible firms can postpone their productions until observing the actual demand, whereas inflexible firms cannot. We formulate a new asymmetrical oligopoly model for the problem, and obtain capacity and production decisions of the firms at Nash equilibrium. It is interesting to verify that cross‐group competition determines the capacity allocation between the two groups of firms, while intergroup competition determines the market share within each group. Moreover, we show that the two strategies coexist among firms only when cost differentiation is medium. Counterintuitively, flexible firms benefit from increasing production cost when the inflexible competition intensity is sufficiently high. This is because of retreat of inflexible firms, flexibility effect, and the corresponding high price. We identify conditions under which FCS is superior than IFCS. We also demonstrate that flexible firms benefit from increasing demand uncertainty. However, when demand variance is not very large, flexible firms may be disadvantaged. We further investigate the effects of cross‐group and intergroup competition on individual performance of the firms. We show that as flexible competition intensity increases, inflexible firms are mainly affected by the cross‐group competition first and then by the intergroup competition, whereas flexible firms are mainly affected by the intergroup competition. Finally, we examine endogenous flexibility and identify its three drivers: cost parameters, cross‐group competition, and intergroup competition. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 64: 117–138, 2017     

Jihad Against Palestinians? The Herostratos Syndrome and the Paradox of Targeting European Jews

Abstract

This paper addresses the waves of mass killings recently perpetrated by individuals with a weak or nonexistent ideological motivation, whose acts either appear to contradict their purported political cause or are admittedly driven by a quest for notoriety. Examples range from killers who have been waging jihad against European Jews to unattached mass killers such as the Germanwings pilot to the perpetrators of mass school shootings in America and worldwide. We argue that these phenomena can be understood as instances of the Herostratos syndrome, which has been known for thousands of years as characterizing the behavior of people who seek to survive in the collective memory by excelling in their infamous acts. We provide a model of hybrid killers which accommodates the Herostratic motive alongside a political motive and characterize a well-behaved Nash equilibrium where Herostratic killers are competing with one another with a view to make a name for themselves in infamy. The policy implications point towards reducing the publicity the killers enjoy, thus frustrating their quest for notoriety.     

球类比赛对大学生球迷竞争意识的积极影响

通过各类球赛对大学生球迷竞争意识的积极影响研究与分析,球赛对不同大学生球迷的影响具差异性。大学生球迷对竞争意识认识不足,争取优胜的信念还有待提高,对外界事物的判断、认识不够准确,参与社会活动内容贫乏,形式单一,选择性少。随着年龄和学龄的增长,在生活与实践中的竞争意识得到进一步强化。球赛本身激烈性和内容丰富性的特点,可以有效地激发和培养大学生球迷的竞争意识,同时也强化了大学生球迷的竞争意识。     

基于科学计量的机器学习技术发展评估分析

机器学习是通过数据训练使机器获取新的知识和技能的计算机技术,是人工智能技术的核心和前沿领域之一。本文以Web of Science?核心合集收录的机器学习领域相关SCI论文和incoPat全球专利数据库收录的机器学习领域相关专利为数据源,运用科学计量方法对文献数据和专利数据进行时间、地域和机构分布分析,展示了机器学习领域研究实力的分布情况,并对机器学习的发展趋势进行了分析;然后利用主题聚类分析方法及可视化软件VOSviewer,挖掘出机器学习领域的关键技术、技术热点;最后对结果进行了总结分析,以期为我国机器学习发展布局提供参考和借鉴。     

基于兵棋推演的赛事设计与组织

为了将基于兵棋推演的各类赛事活动组织的更加合理、规范和标准化,首先简述了组织兵棋推演活动所需的基本条件,而后通过大量实践经验,就如何组织赛事活动中所涉及的主要内容进行逐一的过程化设计描述,最后从推演准备、推演实施和复盘总结三个方面阐述了赛事活动的组织与实施,为今后从事相关工作的组织和人员提供一种可靠方法。     

Evergreening and operational risk under price competition

“Evergreening” is a strategy wherein an innovative pharmaceutical firm introduces an upgrade of its current product when the patent on this product expires. The upgrade is introduced with a new patent and is designed to counter competition from generic manufacturers that seek to imitate the firm's existing product. However, this process is fraught with uncertainty because the upgrade is subject to stringent guidelines and faces approval risk. Thus, an incumbent firm has to make an upfront production capacity investment without clarity on whether the upgrade will reach the market. This uncertainty may also affect the capacity investment of a competing manufacturer who introduces a generic version of the incumbent's existing product but whose market demand depends on the success or failure of the upgrade. We analyze a game where capacity investment occurs before uncertainty resolution and firms compete on prices thereafter. Capacity considerations that arise due to demand uncertainty introduce new factors into the evergreening decision. Equilibrium analysis reveals that the upgrade's estimated approval probability needs to exceed a threshold for the incumbent to invest in evergreening. This threshold for evergreening increases as the intensity of competition in the generic market increases. If evergreening is optimal, the incumbent's capacity investment is either decreasing or nonmonotonic with respect to low end market competition depending on whether the level of product improvement in the upgrade is low or high. If the entrant faces a capacity constraint, then the probability threshold for evergreening is higher than the case where the entrant is not capacity constrained. Finally, by incorporating the risk‐return trade‐off that the incumbent faces in terms of the level of product improvement versus the upgrade success probability, we can characterize policy for a regulator. We show that the introduction of capacity considerations may maximize market coverage and/or social surplus at incremental levels of product improvement in the upgrade. This is contrary to the prevalent view of regulators who seek to curtail evergreening involving incremental product improvement. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 63: 71–89, 2016     

如何增强专业报刊的可读性

结合消防报刊的实际 ,从报刊的思想性、可信性、知识性、贴近性、短捷性、趣味性等方面论述了如何更新观念 ,大胆创新 ,增强专业报刊的可读性 ,以便在激烈竞争的报刊界吸引和赢得更多的读者。     

Traffic channeling under uncertain conversion rates on e-commerce platforms

Traffic is the lifeblood of every e-commerce platform. The question of how to channel traffic to merchants operating on a platform lies at the heart of platform management. We consider a platform on which two independent merchants sell their products. Merchants compete on inventory in the sense that some of the unmet demand at one merchant will spill over to the other. The platform channels traffic based on products' conversion rates to maximize the total sale on the platform. We show that traffic channeling plays three roles. First, it allows more efficient allocation of traffic; that is, the merchant with a high conversion rate is given a higher priority in receiving traffic. Second, it allows the platform to control demand spillover between the merchants to maximize total sales. The platform either facilitates or prevents demand spillover, depending on product substitutability. Third, traffic channeling intensifies competition between the merchants and hence increases the total inventory. More efficient allocation of traffic and the increase in inventory increase sales inequality between the merchants. In contrast, demand spillover decreases sales inequality. While the platform always benefits from traffic channeling, the merchants do not benefit when their products are moderately substitutable. Interestingly, when the two products are owned and sold by the same merchant, the opposite happens–traffic channeling always benefits the merchant but may hurt the platform. Our study provides a basis for informed discussions on how platforms should channel traffic in response to conversion rates, and how traffic channeling affects the welfare of merchants and platforms.     

What U.S. Navy strategists and defense planners should think about in the era of maritime great power competition

ABSTRACT

For the first time in a generation, the US Navy finds itself in an era of great power competition. As US naval strategists and defense planners begin to organise materially and conceptually to confront the strategic and operational-level challenges posed by China and Russia, what should they keep in mind? What should frame their thinking? Absorbed with the day-to-day tasks associated with managing how the fleet is being built, operated, and rationalised, these busy officers and civilians seldom can step back and gain some perspective on fundamental aspects of the security environment and relate those to naval purpose. To that end, this article provides a primer on what to keep in mind and how to think in an era of maritime great power competition.