Revenue Management with Network Effects

如果当更多的其他消费者购买或使用某一产品时，个人消费者更看重该产品，那么该产品就被称为网络效应。社交媒体和互联网技术的扩张导致了显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果。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，希望更好地了解客户如何在多种潜在购买中进行选择。对于这些公司来说，一个重大的挑战是找到方法来制定产品定价和分类规划决策，以考虑到网络效应。这项研究项目将解决这一挑战，并在这样做的过程中，将提供具有潜力的方法，以提高从事互联网商务的公司的盈利能力。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，从而在他们进入劳动力市场时为他们提供复杂的技术技能。本研究项目将研究具有网络效应的消费者选择行为的数学模型，并将这些模型作为多产品定价和选配计划优化问题的基础。该项目将采用多项罗吉特选择模型的变体，并进行适当修改，以纳入网络效应。在这些修正的模型中，驱动个人消费者购买决策的效用函数受到产品总体消费或销售水平的影响。选择模型的这一特点增加了优化问题的难度，因为产品购买概率不仅是产品属性的函数，而且是内生的。该项目将涉及制定和分析解决这些问题所需的办法，并将研究由此产生的解决办法的结构和性质。

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.