Priority Pricing for Profit Maximization Given Strategic, Delay-Sensitive Customers with a Continuum of Types

该奖项的研究目标是研究一个服务提供商面临的延迟敏感，战略客户的到来流。顾客的“类型”包括她对服务的评价和她的延迟敏感性（等待成本）。虽然客户类型的分布可能是已知的或部分已知的，但个人的客户类型是未知的。研究方法是研究一个连续的客户估值（而不是一个有限的数字），使无限多的价格/延迟组合的分析。 这项研究的成果将包括一个收入最大化的激励兼容的价格菜单，客户支付更高的价格获得更高的排队优先级，从而降低延迟。此外，该研究将提供建模和分析工具，以及不同客户类型下的收入和福利比较。如果成功，该研究将及时解决一个问题：如何分配和定价服务优先级给客户，客户在其估值（可用资金）和延迟敏感性方面是异质的，并且愿意撒谎。 该奖项将产生简单的封闭式最佳价格菜单，对不同的优先级收取不同的价格，以优化服务提供商的利润。 这项研究是由两个非常不同的研究领域的组合：激励兼容定价和排队理论，并有助于卡内基梅隆大学和荷兰TUE/EURANDOM研究所之间的定价和排队长期持续的国际合作。开发的数学也将有助于培养研究生和本科生以及数学奥林匹克K-12学生在西部PA ARML团队，并将有助于天鹅计划的最佳采用位置。

The research objective of this award is to study a service provider facing an arrival stream of delay-sensitive, strategic customers. The "type" of a customer consists of her valuation for service and her delay sensitivity (waiting cost). While the distribution of customer types may be known, or partially known, an individual's customer type is not known. The research approach is to study a continuum of customer valuations (rather than a finite number), enabling the analysis of infinitely many price/delay combinations. The deliverables of this research will include a revenue-maximizing incentive-compatible menu of prices, where a customer pays a higher price to receive higher queuing priority, and hence lower delay. Additionally the research will deliver modeling and analysis tools and revenue and welfare comparisons under different customer types.If successful, this research will solve a timely problem: how to allocate and price service priority to customers, where the customers are heterogeneous in their valuations (available funds)and in their delay sensitivities and are willing to lie about these. The award will produce simple closed-form optimal price menus that charge different prices for different priority levels, so as to optimize profit for the service provider. The research is made possible by a combination of two very different research areas: incentive-compatible pricing and queuing theory and contributes to a long-term ongoing international collaboration in pricing and queuing between Carnegie Mellon and the TUE/EURANDOM Institute in the Netherlands. The mathematics developed will also help train graduate and undergraduate students as well as Math Olympiad K-12 students in the Western PA ARML team and will contribute to the SWAN program on optimal adoption placement.