Revenue Management with Network Effects

如果有更多的消费者购买或使用一种产品，那么个人消费者对这种产品的价值就会增加，这种产品就会表现出网络效应。社交媒体和互联网技术的扩张导致了展示网络效应的新产品的出现（例如，多人在线游戏，团购机会）。它还通过允许个人轻松参与围绕这些产品建立的在线社区，加强了电影、电视节目和书籍等传统产品的网络效应。与此同时，信息技术的进步使销售此类产品的公司能够收集大量数据，以期更好地了解客户如何在多种潜在购买中做出选择。对于这些公司来说，一个重大的挑战是找到一种方法来制定产品定价和分类规划决策，以考虑网络效应。该研究项目将解决这一挑战，并在此过程中提供具有提高从事互联网商务的公司盈利能力潜力的方法。研究生和本科生将参与该项目，并将接触到数学建模和优化技术，从而为他们进入劳动力市场提供复杂的技术技能。因此，这项研究将有利于美国经济和社会。本研究项目将研究具有网络效应的顾客选择行为的数学模型，并将这些模型作为多产品定价和分类规划优化问题的基础。该项目将采用多项逻辑选择模型的变体，适当修改以纳入网络效应。在这些修改后的模型中，驱动单个客户购买决策的效用函数受到产品的总体消费或销售水平的影响。选择模型的这一特征增加了优化问题的难度，因为产品购买概率不仅仅是产品属性的函数，而是内生的。该项目将涉及解决这些问题所需的方法的开发和分析，并将研究所得解决方案的结构和性质。

A product is said to exhibit network effects if individual consumers value it more when greater numbers of other consumers purchase or use it. The expansion of social media and internet technology has led to the emergence of new products that display network effects (for example, multi-player online games, group buying opportunities). It has also served to strengthen network effects for traditional products such as movies, television programs, and books by allowing individuals to easily participate in online communities built around those products. In the meantime, advances in information technology have enabled firms that sell such products to collect large quantities of data in hopes of better understanding how customers choose among multiple potential purchases. For these firms, a significant challenge is to find ways of making product pricing and assortment planning decisions that account for network effects. This research project will address this challenge and, in doing so, will provide methodologies that hold the potential to improve the profitability of firms engaged in internet commerce. Graduate and undergraduate students will be involved in the project and will gain exposure to techniques of mathematical modeling and optimization, thereby providing them with sophisticated technical skills as they enter the workforce. Consequently, the research will benefit the United States economy as well as society.This research project will study mathematical models of customer choice behavior with network effects, and will use those models as the basis for multi-product pricing and assortment planning optimization problems. The project will employ variations of the multinomial logit choice model, suitably modified to incorporate network effects. In these modified models, the utility functions that drive individual customer purchase decisions are affected by overall consumption or sales levels of the products. This feature of the choice models adds difficulty to the optimization problems, because product purchase probabilities are not merely functions of product attributes, but rather are endogenous. This project will involve the development and analysis of approaches needed to solve these problems and will study the structure and properties of the resulting solutions.