Pricing in Queues Without Demand Information

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Haviv, Moshe; Randhawa, Ramandeep S.
• 署名单位: Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; University of Southern California
• 刊物名称: M&SOM-MANUFACTURING & SERVICE OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1523-4614
• DOI: 10.1287/msom.2014.0479
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 401-411
• 关键词: static pricing; Dynamic pricing; revenue optimization; robust optimization

摘要

We consider revenue optimization in an M/M/1 queue with price and delay sensitive customers, and we study the performance of demand-independent pricing that does not require any arrival rate information. We formally characterize the optimal demand-independent price and its performance relative to pricing with precise arrival rate knowledge. We find that demand-independent pricing can perform remarkably well and its performance improves as customers become more delay sensitive. In particular, for uniformly distributed customer valuations, under a large set of parameters, we find that demand-independent prices can capture more than 99% of the optimal revenue. We also study social optimization and find that demand-independent pricing can perform quite well; however, the performance is better under revenue optimization.