Sequential item pricing for unlimited supply
Author(s)
Balcan, Maria-Florina
Constantin, Florin
Advisor(s)
Editor(s)
Collections
Supplementary to:
Permanent Link
Abstract
A common challenge faced by sellers is to explore and exploit,
in limited time, buyers' willingness to pay. We propose distribution-free
revenue maximization techniques for a seller with unlimited supply of n
item types facing m myopic buyers present for k < n days.
We highlight the power of linear uniform prices (i.e. equal item prices)
for buyer valuations with hereditary maximizers (HM), e.g. multi-unit or
gross substitutes valuations. In particular, we present a non-increasing,
randomized, schedule of k linear uniform prices with expected revenue
within a log[k](mn) factor of optimal given HM valuations. Our result
improves by a log k factor [2]'s approximation for general valuations and one-shot prices, and does not go through even for submodular valuations.
We also consider influences (in the form of allocative externalities) be-
tween buyers with HM valuations. We provide a rather general model of
positive influence of other buyers' ownership of some items on a buyer's
valuation. For affine, submodular externalities, we present an influence-
and-exploit [8] marketing strategy based on our algorithm for private HM valuations. This strategy preserves our log[k](mn) approximation factor,
despite an affine increase (due to externalities) in the optimum revenue.
Sponsor
Date
2010
Extent
Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Technical Report