Organizational Unit:

Scheller College of Business

Permanent Link

https://hdl.handle.net/1853/70690

Parent Organization

Organizational Unit

Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs

Includes Organization(s)

Organizational Unit

Institute for Leadership and Social Impact

ArchiveSpace Name Record

https://finding-aids.library.gatech.edu/agents/corporate_entities/255

Full item page

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 23

Optimal Customized Pricing in Competitive Settings

( 2006-10-14) Ferguson, Mark E. ; Agrawal, Vishal

In this paper, we study pricing situations where a firm provides a price quote in the presence of uncertainty in the competitive landscape and the preferences of the buyer. We review two possible customized-pricing bid-response models used in practice which can be developed from the historical information available to the firm based on previous bidding opportunities. We show how these models may be used to exploit the differences in the market segments to generate optimal price quotes given the characteristics of the current bid opportunity. We also show how the models may be adjusted depending on the amount of historical bid information available to the user. Finally, we test the two methods on two industry datasets to compare their performance and estimate the percent improvement in expected profits that may be possible from their use.
Product Quality Choice, Competition, and Supply Chain Design

( 2006-10-14) Ferguson, Mark E. ; Kavadias, Stylianos

We explore the interplay between product design choices and their effect on the supply chain transactions. A large number of industrial business-to-business transactions indicates that product design choices, and the definition of the overall product performance (quality), is relying on "off the shelf" standardized components, and it influences the component pricing. We develop a normative model that highlights the drivers for the different industrial settings and we consider end product markets with quality sensitive heterogenous consumers (vertical differentiation). We find that depending on the industry concentration at the different tiers of the supply chain, the timing of the product definition by the OEM has a substantial effect on the transacting firms payoff, as well as on other relevant metrics (total supply chain profits, social welfare). By examining the potential action sequences across the transacting firms, we identify the incentives for each firm to accomplish a decision earlier or later in the strategic interaction. Interestingly, the standard notion of the "leader" advantage in the transaction does not hold always, due to the indirect effect of the component cost on the end-product market, through the indirect link between the product performance and the total market served. Therefore, the OEM may benefit more from finalizing the end product specifications based on known component costs. Along similar lines, the supplier may benefit from a "follower" position in the sequence of decisions. Finally, the severity of competition in any of the two tiers may be diluted by a specific sequence, depending on the available nformation at the monopolistic tier.
Purchasing Speculative Inventory for Price Sensitive Demand

( 2006-09-16) Ferguson, Mark E. ; Ketzenberg, Michael E. ; Kuik, Roelof

The problem studied is one of buying and selling products cost eficiently over a number of periods in a finite horizon setting. Unit purchase costs vary across periods acording to some known distribution and demand is deterministic but dependent on the price charged for the product. Thus, the problem becomes one of exploiting opportunities to “forward buy” and sell profitably in the face of costs for carrying product.
Expert Opinions: Current Pricing and Revenue Management Practice Across U.S. Industries

( 2006-09-16) Ferguson, Mark E. ; Garrow, Laurie A. ; Swann, Julie ; Keskinocak, Pinar

On May 18, 2006, the second annual Revenue Management and Price Optimization conference was held at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The theme of the conference was on how the Internet is changing traditional revenue management and pricing practices. The conference brought together experts and thought leaders from more than 30 companies; spanning airlines, hotels, car rentals, cruise lines, apartment rentals, aircraft manufacturing, retailing, distribution, e-mail marketing, on-line travel, logistics, sports, performing arts, software providers, and others. This paper summarizes the key discussions from this conference and synthesizes experts’ perspectives on near-term opportunities and challenges facing their industries.
The "Killer Application" of Revenue Management: Harrah’s Cherokee Casino & Hotel (ed.1)

( 2006-09-16) Ferguson, Mark E. ; Metters, Richard ; Crystal, Carolyn Roberts

Harrah’s Cherokee Casino and Hotel is an extreme example of revenue management techniques. Typical revenue management installations yield revenue enhancements of 3-7%. Harrah’s, chainwide, has seen 15% improvements, with Harrah’s Cherokee Casino and Hotel perhaps the most excessive beneficiary, despite serving no alcohol and having no table games. We investigate what drives this phenomenal success.
Single Stage Heuristic for Perishable Inventory Control in Two-Echelon Supply Chains

( 2006-09-16) Ferguson, Mark E. ; Lystad, Erik D. ; Alexopoulos, Christos

We study the problem of determining stocking levels for fixed-life perishable products in a two-echelon supply chain. We consider both serial chains and distribution networks consisting of a warehouse and n non-identical retail locations. Inventory retains constant utility throughout its lifetime, lead-times are deterministic, there are no fixed ordering costs, and unmet demand is backlogged. Although an extensive literature exists for the nonperishable product case, the consideration of perishability significantly complicates the problem. For instance, a major complication is the need to track the age of inventory as well as its position in the supply chain, adding a dimension to the already burdensome state space of dynamic programming formulations. We provide accurate single-stage heuristics for determining the stocking levels for two-echelon supply chains. We use these heuristics to develop insight and intuition into the proper management of perishable inventory. Our heuristics are robust, easy-to-use, and simple enough to be implemented using spreadsheet applications.
Managing Slow Moving Perishables in the Grocery Industry

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-06-30) Ferguson, Mark E. ; Ketzenberg, Michael E.

We address the value of information (VOI) and value of centralized control (VCC) in the context of a two–echelon, serial supply chain with one retailer and one supplier that provides a single perishable product to consumers. Our analysis is relevant for managing slower moving perishable products with fixed lot sizes and expiration dates of a week or less. We evaluate two supply chain structures. In the first structure, referred to as Decentralized Information Sharing, the retailer shares its demand, inventory, and ordering policy with the supplier, yet both facilities make their own profit-maximizing replenishment decisions. In the second structure, referred to as Centralized Control, incentives are aligned and the replenishment decisions are coordinated. The latter supply chain structure corresponds to the industry practices of company owned stores or vendor–managed inventory. We measure the VOI and VCC as the marginal improvement in expected profits that a supply chain achieves relative to the case when no information is shared and decision making is decentralized. Key assumptions of our model include stochastic demand, lost sales, and fixed order quantities. We establish the importance of information sharing and centralized control in the supply chain and identify conditions under which benefits are realized. As opposed to previous work on the VOI, the major benefit in our setting is driven by the supplier’s ability to provide the retailer with fresher product. By isolating the benefit by firm, we show that sharing information is not always Pareto improving for both supply chain partners in the decentralized setting.
A Comparison of Unconstraining Methods to Improve Revenue Management Systems (ed.2)

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-05-31) Ferguson, Mark E. ; Crystal, Carolyn Roberts ; Higbie, Jon ; Kapoor, Rohit

A successful revenue management system requires accurate demand forecasts for each customer segment. The forecasts are used to set booking limits for lower value customers to ensure an adequate supply for higher value customers. The very use of booking limits, however, constrains the historical demand data needed for an accurate forecast. Ignoring this interaction leads to substantial penalties in a firm's potential revenues. We review existing unconstraining methods and propose a new method that includes some attractive properties not found in the existing methods. We evaluate several of the common unconstraining methods against our proposed method by testing them on intentionally constrained simulated data. Results show our proposed method along with the Expectation Maximization (EM) method perform the best. We also test the revenue impact of our proposed method, EM, and "no unconstraining" on actual booking data from a hotel/casino. We show that performance varies with the initial starting protection limits and a lack of unconstraining leads to significant revenue losses.
Where To Differentiate Your Product When Stocking Levels Are Coupled

( 2006-03-08) Ferguson, Mark E. ; Lystad, Erik D.

A critical assumption of Lee and Tang’s (1997) analysis of where in the production process a company should delay differentiation of its product is the independent treatment of installations in the production network. We show this “decoupling” approach gives rise to inaccuracies in assessing the value of delayed differentiation, frequently overestimating but also potentially underestimating the savings in inventory costs by failing to appropriately exploit the risk pooling effect. By doing so, we reveal a previously hidden factor in determining the optimal delayed differentiation strategy: the pattern of holding costs assessed for the various stages of work-in-process, which we refer to as the holding cost profile, plays an important role in the determination of the optimal strategy. Prior work has established the importance of the absolute holding cost at each stage in this decision but the relative holding costs are also important; as sharp increases in the local holding costs indicate potential cost reduction opportunities. Finally, we provide insight on the conditions when the decoupling assumption may lead to significant errors and cause a firm to make a costly mistake when determining where in the process to differentiate its product.
Simple Newsvendor Heuristics for Two-Echelon Distribution Networks

( 2006-03-08) Ferguson, Mark E. ; Lystad, Erik D.

We consider the problem of determining stocking levels in a multi-echelon distribution network consisting of a warehouse and n non-identical retail locations. Lead-times are deterministic, there are no fixed ordering costs, and unmet demand is backlogged. Both Clark and Scarf (1960) and Federgruen and Zipkin (1984b) propose heuristic solutions for such a problem based on a stochastic dynamic programming formulation. The disadvantage of their formulations lies in the very large state space needed for its solution. For a serial supply chains, Shang and Song (2003) provide single period newsvendor problems that bound the optimal stocking levels determined by the Clark and Scarf (1960) serial supply chain model. Newsvendor bounds have a number of valuable qualities; they are considerably less computationally intensive, allow for ready parametric analysis, and facilitate the development of intuition. In this paper, we extend the newsvendor bounds technique to distribution systems, thus providing a simple and surprisingly accurate heuristic. Through a simulation study, we show that our heuristic significantly outperforms other common heuristics over a wide range of parameter values. The closed form solutions provided by the newsvendor bounds also allows us to gain insights into the system behavior of a distribution network that was not previously possible through alternative solution techniques.