Informs 2015

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INFORMS Philadelphia – 2015
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4 - Package Size and Pricing Decisions with a Bulk Sale Option
Ismail Kirci, PhD Student, University Of Texas at Dallas, 800 W.
Campbell Road, Richardson, YX, 75080, United States of America,
Alp Muharremoglu, Dorothee Honhon
In this study we investigate package size and pricing decisions of a retailer for a
perishable product. The retailer has the option of bulk sale, which is defined as
selling the product in a container that allows customers to buy as much or as little
as they want.
MD50
50-Room 106A, CC
Procurement, Auction, and Pricing
Sponsor: Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Sponsored Session
Chair: Zhixi Wan, Assistant Professor, University of Oregon, Eugene,
OR, United States of America,
1 - Optimal Descending Mechanisms for Constrained Procurement
Shivam Gupta, PhD Candidate, UT Dallas, NJ School of
Management, 800 W. Campbell Rd., Richardson, TX, 75080,
United States of America, Milind
Dawande, Ganesh Janakiraman, Wei Chen
We propose optimal descending mechanisms for procurement under two
practically-relevant feasibility constraints. We then show that both mechanisms
belong to a larger class of descending mechanisms that are optimal for
procurement under polymatroid feasibility constraints.
2 - Dual Sourcing Auctions for Unreliable Suppliers: with or Without
Cost Distribution Information
He Huang, Professor, Chongqing University, School of Economics
and Business Admin., Chongqing, China, ,
Zhipeng Li, Hongyan Xu
This paper examines dual-sourcing auctions for risk mitigation when a buyer
faces uncertain demand and multiple unreliable suppliers with private cost
information. Two scenarios involving three auction formats are considered,
Generalized First-price Auction, Generalized English Auction and Optimal
Auction with Learning. We separately design the above dual-sourcing auctions
and then examine the buyer’s strategic choice.
3 - Using Procurement Service Providers in Supplier Screening
Zhixi Wan, Assistant Professor, University of Oregon,
Eugene, OR, United States of America, ,
Sripad Devalkar
A buyer engages a procurement service provider (PSP) to short-list pre-screened
suppliers for final selection. The PSP can exert costly effort to include promising
candidates that have a higher probability to be deemed qualified by the buyer. We
solve the buyer’s joint optimization about the short-list size and the performance
bonus.
4 - Dynamic Pricing with Product Returns
Xing Hu, Assistant Professor, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR,
United States of America,
We consider a monopolist’s dynamic pricing problem when the customers may
stochastically return the purchased products. We study how the customers’ return
speed and return probability affect the optimal pricing decisions.
MD51
51-Room 106B, CC
Applications of Operations Management to
Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Industry
Sponsor: Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Sponsored Session
Chair: Zhili Tian, Assistant Professor, Florida International University,
11200 S.W. 8th Street, Miami, FL, United States of America,
1 - Process Flexibility with Inventory
Yang Wang, UC Berkeley, IEOR Dept., Berkeley, CA, 48109,
United States of America, ,
Philip Kaminsky
Motivated by a capacity planning project undertaken with a biopharmaceutical
firm, we explore the benefits of combining process flexibility with inventory to
better respond to demand uncertainty. We consider a multi-plant multi-product
multi-period supply chain model in which each plant is capable of producing
multiple products as well as holding inventory, and characterize conditions under
which inventory, flexibility, or a combination of the two are most beneficial.
2 - Optimal Investment in Support of Existing Drug and Development
of New Drug
Zhili Tian, Assistant Professor, Florida International University,
11200 S.W. 8th Street, Miami, FL, United States of America,
Firms invest in the support of existing drug and R&D of new drug. While the
investment fund comes from the net sales of the existing drug, a firm has to
balance the investment in the two types of competing projects. We determine the
optimal resource allocation between the marketing support of the existing
product and developing a new product. We estimate the demand as function of
investment in marketing. We derive the optimal investment policy for the above
two types of investment.
3 - Nurse Staffing Decision in Nursing Homes
Min Chen, Florida International University, 10200 SW 8th St,
Miami, FL, 33199, United States of America,
Staffing is the dominant input in the production of nursing home services. This
paper examined how skilled nursing facilities responded to the minimum nursing
hours per resident day regulations. Panel data analyses of facility-level nursing
inputs and outputs revealed that nursing homes strategically reallocated their
staffing levels and skill mix, which could have important implications for quality
management.
MD53
53-Room 107B, CC
Behavioral Studies in Supply Chains and
Revenue Management
Sponsor: Behavioral Operations Management
Sponsored Session
Chair: Jun Li, Assistant Professor, Ross School of Business, University of
Michigan, 701 Tappan St, Ann Arbor, 48103, United States of America,
Co-Chair: Xiaobo Zhao, Professor, Tsinghua University, Shunde
Building, Beijing, China, , Beijing, China
1 - Does Elicitation Method Matter? Behavioral and Neuroimaging
Evidence from Capacity Allocation Game
Yukun Zhao, Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua
University, Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua
University, Beijing, 100084, China, ,
Lihong Wang, Yefen Chen, Xiaobo Zhao
Based on the allocation game, we conduct a normative-behavioral experiment
and a neuroimaging experiment by adopting fMRI technique to investigate the
elicitation-method effect under the direct-response method and the strategy
method. No significant difference is observed in either ordering behaviors or brain
activities between the two elicitation methods. Our results indicate that in multi-
round game experiments without emotion features, the elicitation-method effect
is not likely to exhibit.
2 - Transparency and Indirect Reciprocity in Social Responsibility:
An Incentivized Experiment
Leon Valdes, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,
MA, United States of America, Tim Kraft,
Karen Zheng
We design an incentivized experiment to study the impact of transparency on
consumers’ valuations of a firm’s social responsibility practices. We investigate
how much of consumers’ valuations can be attributed to indirect reciprocity. We
also analyze how heterogeneity in prosocial orientation impacts the roles of
transparency and indirect reciprocity. Our results demonstrate that consumers are
willing to pay a higher price under a higher level of transparency.
3 - Social Influence and Quality Competition: An Experimental Study
Dayoung Kim, Cornell University, 301A, 114 East Avenue,
Ithaca, NY, 14850, United States of America, ,
Vishal Gaur, Andrew Davis
We investigate the impact that different types of social information have on the
market share and demand uncertainty of firms competing through service quality.
In particular, we conduct a lab experiment, where a consumer chooses to visit
one of two firms, which differ in their average service quality. Our results suggest
that the presence and type of social information can dramatically impact the
consumers’ decisions, a firm’s market share and demand uncertainty.
MD50