Bayesian strategies for dynamic pricing in e‐commerce

E‐commerce platforms afford retailers unprecedented visibility into customer purchase behavior and provide an environment in which prices can be updated quickly and cheaply in response to changing market conditions. This study investigates dynamic pricing strategies for maximizing revenue in an Internet retail channel by actively learning customers' demand response to price. A general methodology is proposed for dynamically pricing information goods, as well as other nonperishable products for which inventory levels are not an essential consideration in pricing. A Bayesian model of demand uncertainty involving the Dirichlet distribution or a mixture of such distributions as a prior captures a wide range of beliefs about customer demand. We provide both analytic formulas and efficient approximation methods for updating these prior distributions after sales data have been observed. We then investigate several strategies for sequential pricing based on index functions that consider both the potential revenue and the information value of selecting prices. These strategies require a manageable amount of computation, are robust to many types of prior misspecification, and yield high revenues compared to static pricing and passive learning approaches. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007     

The impact of demand uncertainty on product line design under endogenous substitution

The existing product line design literature devotes little attention to the effect of demand uncertainty. Due to demand uncertainty, the supply‐demand mismatch is inevitable which leads to different degrees of lost sales depending on the configuration of product lines. In this article, we adopt a stylized two‐segment setup with uncertain market sizes and illustrate the interplay between two effects: risk pooling that mitigates the impact of demand uncertainty and market segmentation that facilitates consumer differentiation. Compared to downward substitution, inducing bidirectional substitution through product line decisions including quality levels and prices can yield greater risk pooling effects. However, we show that the additional benefit from the risk pooling effect cannot compensate for the reduced market segmentation effect. We demonstrate that the presence of demand uncertainty can reduce the benefit of market segmentation and therefore the length of product lines in terms of the difference between products. We also propose three heuristics that separate product line and production decisions; each of these heuristics corresponds to one particular form of demand substitution. Our numerical studies indicate that the best of the three heuristics yields performance that is close to optimality. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 62: 143–157, 2015     

震灾应急物资动态需求预测模型研究

为提高应急物资需求预测方法的实用性,同时考虑提前期和需求的不确定性,采用安全库存理论构建震灾应急物资动态需求预测模型,以观测得到的实际到货量、实际消耗量和实时剩余库存量等信息来动态预测当前时刻应急物资的需求量。应用算例表明,所建模型不仅能够准确反映需求量与被保障人员总数的正相关关系,而且还能实时体现被保障人员总数的变化情况。因此,该模型能够为震灾过程中应急物资需求量的确定提供科学决策依据,具有一定的实用价值和应用前景。     

连续不间断高层建筑快速逃生装置的设计与应用研究

高层建筑数量增多的同时,其人员安全疏散问题日益凸显,研究高层建筑受困人员火灾情况下的自救逃生和连续疏散非常重要。结合国内外高层建筑逃生装置研究现状和存在的主要问题,研究设计了连续不间断高层建筑快速逃生装置的结构,分析了其结构设计特点,并与传统救援设备进行了性能对比分析。针对国内高层建筑火灾形势,探讨了该装置在高层建筑受困人员快速、多人连续逃生方面的优势和应用前景。     

日本防卫产业发展潜力问题分析

日本自卫队追求能力提升和活动范围扩大的努力受到其防卫产业发展的局限。防卫预算的有限直接导致防卫产业的市场规模狭小。部分核心技术自主研发的缺失限制了防卫产业独立发展的能力。融合式发展模式在成本核算、劳动生产率提升和产业发展稳定性等方面限制了防卫产业发展的潜力。     

A note on the forecast performance of temporal aggregation

Earlier research on the effects of nonoverlapping temporal aggregation on demand forecasting showed the benefits associated with such an approach under a stationary AR(1) or MA(1) processes for decision making conducted at the disaggregate level. The first objective of this note is to extend those important results by considering a more general underlying demand process. The second objective is to assess the conditions under which aggregation may be a preferable approach for improving decision making at the aggregate level as well. We confirm the validity of previous results under more general conditions, and we show the increased benefit resulting from forecasting by temporal aggregation at lower frequency time units. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 489–500, 2014     

不卸载时侧贴碳纤维布加固连续梁试验研究

为研究不同初始荷载作用下侧贴碳纤维布加固连续梁的受力与变形特性,以及初始荷载对加固效果的影响,对4根钢筋混凝土两跨连续梁（其中1根为未加固连续梁,其余3根为在不同初始荷载下侧贴碳纤维布加固连续梁）进行了试验研究。结果表明：侧贴碳纤维布加固连续梁不仅能提高加固梁的承载力,提高幅度达16%以上;还能提高加固梁的刚度,减少其挠度和裂缝宽度;加固效果受初始荷载影响,初始荷载越小,加固效果越好。     

《连续系统建模》的计算机辅助学习与考核系统

本文介绍了一个用于《连续系统建模》学习与考核的计算机辅助教学课件的功能和设计原理,重点介绍了系统动力学模型图的知识表达和建模行为的有效性度量的方法。