2015 Informs Annual Meeting

WD46

INFORMS Philadelphia – 2015

WD44 44-Room 103B, CC Revenue Management and Pricing in Social Networks Sponsor: Revenue Management and Pricing Sponsored Session Chair: Amir Ajorlou, Postodctoral Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, E32-D569, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States of America, ajorlou@mit.edu 1 - Ergodic Social Learning Alireza Tahbaz-Salehi, Columbia Business School, 3022 Broadway, Uris Hall 418, New York, NY, 10023, United States of America, alirezat@columbia.edu, Ali Jadbabaie, Pooya Molavi This paper examines how the structure of a social network and the quality of information available to different agents determine the speed of social learning. In a variant of the DeGroot learning model, we show that the rate of learning has a simple analytical characterization in terms of the relative entropy of agents’ signal structures and their eigenvector centralities. 2 - Cournot Competition in Networked Markets Shayan Ehsani, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA, 94305, United States of America, shayane@stanford.edu, Kostas Bimpikis The paper considers competition among firms that produce a homogeneous good in a networked environment. A bipartite graph determines which subset of markets a firm can supply to. We characterize equilibrium supply quantities, prices, and profits, and provide several insights regarding entering a new market or two firms merging. 3 - Maximizing Stochastic Monotone Submodular Functions Arash Asadpour, Assistant Professor, New York University, 44 West 4th Street, Suite 8-60, New York, NY, 10012, United States of America, aasadpou@stern.nyu.edu, Hamid Nazerzadeh We study the problem of maximizing a stochastic monotone submodular function with respect to a matroid constraint. We show that the adaptivity gap ó the ratio between the values of optimal adaptive and optimal non-adaptive policies ó is bounded and is equal to e/(e-1). We propose a polynomial-time non-adaptive policy that achieves this bound. We also present an adaptive myopic policy that obtains at least half of the optimal value. 4 - Dynamic Pricing in Social Networks: The Word of Mouth Effect Amir Ajorlou, Postodctoral Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, E32-D569, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States of America, ajorlou@mit.edu, Ali Jadbabaie, Ali Kakhbod We study the problem of optimal dynamic pricing for a monopolist selling a product to consumers in a social network. The only means of spread of information about the product is via Word of Mouth communication. We show that, in line with the real world evidence from smartphone applications, the optimal dynamic pricing policy for durable products drops the price to zero infinitely often, giving away the immediate profit in full to expand the informed network in order to exploit it in future. WD45 45-Room 103C, CC Sustainability III Contributed Session Chair: Rajab Khalilpour, Dr, University of Sydney, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Eng, Sydney 2006, Australia, rajab.khalilpour@sydney.edu.au 1 - Understanding Spatio-temporal Diffusion of New Durable Products: The Toyota Prius Hybrid Vehicle David Keith, Assistant Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management, 100 Main St, Room E62-441, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States of America, dkeith@mit.edu, Jeroen Struben, John D. Sterman We propose an analytical framework in which spatio-temporal diffusion is explained by social influence between adopters and potential adopters at different geographic scales, for which data are more readily observable. We analyze Prius sales in 4 US cities selected to capture variation in conduciveness and observed adoption. We find that variation in Prius adoption is primarily explained by social contagion within each ZIP code, amplifying underlying market heterogeneities.

2 - Sustainability Consciousness in Engineering Education Qiong Wang, National University of Singapore, #12-207C, North Tower, University Town, Singapore, 138601, Singapore, qiong.wang@u.nus.edu University sustainability education programs in several European countries and the US have been compared to find common characteristics of the curricula in environmental science and engineering programs. This study investigates differences in the world’s top universities for engineering and technology with the QS World University Rankings and Times Higher Education World University Rankings by Faculty in the academic year 2014-15. 3 - Sustainability Trends in Service Sectors: A Text Mining Approach In this paper, sustainability reports of major companies in the service sectors are obtained and used. To extract useful information or uncover hidden patterns from these reports, text mining is applied. The higher the frequency of a certain term, the greater is the emphasis that companies place on them and hence the more important they are to the companies. 4 - Financial Sustainability of Operator Assisted E-government Kiosks in Emerging Economies Rajesh Sharma, Research Scholar, Indian Institute of Management, Prabandh Shikhar, Rau, Indore, MP, 453556, India, f12rajeshs@iimidr.ac.in, Rajhans Mishra The paper addresses the issue of finacial sustainability of operator assisted kiosks which are deployed in emerging economies to overcome the handicap of low education, PC penetration and lack of Internet connectivity. 5 - Feasibility Study of Grid Defection with PV and Battery Rajab Khalilpour, Dr, University of Sydney, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engi, University of Sydney, University of Sydney, 2006, Australia, rajab.khalilpour@sydney.edu.au, Anthony Vassallo We have developed a mixed-integer decision support tool for rigorous assessment of the feasibility of leaving the grid. Numerous sensitivity analyses are carried out over critical parameters such as technology costs, system size, load, and feed-in- tariff. The results show that leaving-the-grid is not the best economic option and it might be more beneficial to keep the connection with the grid, but minimize the electricity purchase by installation of an optimal size of a PV-battery system. WD46 46-Room 104A, CC Empirical Research in Service Operations Sponsor: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt/Service Operations Sponsored Session Chair: Ryan Buell, Harvard Business School, Morgan Hall 429, Boston, MA, 02163, United States of America, rbuell@hbs.edu 1 - Strategically Giving Service: Information Visibility and Driver Behavior in Ehailing Services Antonio Moreno-Garcia, Northwestern University, 2001 Sheridan Rd, Evanston, Il, 60208, United States of America, a-morenogarcia@kellogg.northwestern.edu, Can Ozkan Using data from a leading eHailing platform, we study how drivers react to the existence of detailed information about the location of their competitors, and we analyze how this phenomenon affects operational efficiency. 2 - Increasing Sales by Managing Congestion in Self-service Environments: Evidence from A Field Experime Saravanan Kesavan, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kenan-Flagler Business School, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, United States of America, Saravanan_Kesavan@kenan-flagler.unc.edu, Hyun Seok Lee, Vinayak Deshpande We examine the impact of congestion in fitting-room on store performance. We demonstrate an inverted-U relationship between fitting-room traffic and sales. We find that co-production is more effective: increasing fitting-room labor by one person through field experiment increases sales per hour by 15.77%. Our solution was adopted with around 100 stores. Finally, we tease out two mechanisms of congestion effect by closely observing other retail store: 1) Waiting time and 2) Phantom stock-out. Youqin Pan, Assustant Professor, Salem State University, 352 Lafayette Street, Salem, MA, 01970, United States of America, youqinpan@my.unt.edu, Xiaocun Sun

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