Pricing and capacity rationing for rentals with uncertain durations

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gans, Noah; Savin, Sergei
• 署名单位: University of Pennsylvania; Columbia University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1060.0651
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 390-407
• 关键词: Dynamic Programming; services; rentals; revenue management

摘要

We consider a rental firm with two types of customers. Contract customers pay fixed, prenegotiated rental fees and expect a high quality of service. Walk-in customers have no contractual relations with the firm and are shopping for price. Given multiple contract and walk-in classes, the rental firm has to decide when to offer service to contract customers and what fees to charge walk-in customers for service. We formulate this rental management problem as a problem in stochastic control and characterize optimal policies for managing contract and walk-in customers. We also consider static, myopic controls that are simpler to implement, and we analytically establish conditions under which these policies perform optimally. Complementary numerical tests provide a sense of the range of systems for which myopic policies are effective.