• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.1-17
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• 2008

Market segmentation is a key strategic factor in increasing the expected profits, especially in the practice of revenue management. A manufacturing firm should manage both manufacturing quantities and pricing decisions over its segmented markets to maximize the expected profits, setting different price for each different segment. Also, market segments should be kept separate in order to prevent demand leakages between different market segments. In fact, even though the markets for different products are firmly segmented, it is not easy to keep separate segmentation because many products might be substitutable by customer buying behavior. That is, customers respond to price changes by purchasing other market's products instead of purchasing the originally requested products, which causes demand substitution effect ; This kind of substitution is referred to as price-driven substitution. Therefore, decisions on optimal prices should take into account the differences in customers' valuation of the different products. We consider a deterministic model for deciding optimal prices in the presence of price-driven substitution, and we compare both symmetrical-and asymmetrical-type demand substitutions between two segmented markets. The objective of this study is to develop analytical and numerical models to examine the impact of price-driven substitution on the optimal price levels and the total expected profits.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.231-237
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• 2006

A controversy get more deeply intensified about the price of inpatient's meal provided in hospital as the Ministry of Health and Welfare declared the National Health Insurance will cover inpatient's meal from 2006. By using newly designed cost analysis method and stratification method of the population, the optimal price of inpatient's meal are derived based on the 71 sample hospitals. This study analyzed 71 samples based on the activity based costing(ABC) and the method of relative units value(RUV). The factors influencing the level of cost are found by linking the results of cost and statistical analysis. As the key factors influencing the cost are the number of employees in a nutrition department and a the number of meals provided to the patients, These factors should be considered when the optimal price of inpatient meals is set for the coverage of the National Health Insurance.

• The Journal of Fisheries Business Administration
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.103-114
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• 1994

We consider the continous, deterministic, infinite horiton, perishable item inventory, within the setting of a retail sector, in which the price for an item is dependent on the lifetime of inventory. Replenishment cost is kept constant but the carrying cost per units is allowed to vary according to product lifetime. Tro possibilities of variation are considered : (1) Product lifetime is longer than cycletime and (2) Product lifetime is shorter than cycletime. We find the optimal policies and decision rules for perishable product.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.241-249
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• 2004

By committing to a long-term replenishment contract, suppliers can mitigate the pressure to find new customers and afford to charge a discounted price to buyers seeking to lower their purchasing costs. In this paper, we develop an analytical model from buyer's perspective for the contracting process to investigate the buyer-supplier interactions. Based on the developed model, we propose an algorithm to derive optimal strategy for the contract. We consider a system with a single buyer and a supplier in a situation where the buyer's inventory is controlled by (R, S) policy under VMI setting. According to the contract, the supplier should replenish the buyer's inventory up to a fixed level every R times during a specified period. The buyer purchases any deficient amount from a spot market at a higher price. We show by computational experiment that our proposed algorithm finds the global optimum solution.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.30 no.7_8
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• pp.672-680
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• 2003

A shopbot is a software agent whose goal is to maximize buyer´s satisfaction through automatically gathering the price and quality information of goods as well as the services from on-line sellers. In the response to shopbots´ activities, sellers on the Internet need the agents called pricebots that can help them maximize their own profits. In this paper we adopts Q-learning, one of the model-free reinforcement learning methods as a price-setting algorithm of pricebots. A Q-learned agent increases profitability and eliminates the cyclic price wars when compared with the agents using the myoptimal (myopically optimal) pricing strategy Q-teaming needs to select a sequence of state-action fairs for the convergence of Q-teaming. When the uniform random method in selecting state-action pairs is used, the number of accesses to the Q-tables to obtain the optimal Q-values is quite large. Therefore, it is not appropriate for universal on-line learning in a real world environment. This phenomenon occurs because the uniform random selection reflects the uncertainty of exploitation for the optimal policy. In this paper, we propose a Mixed Nonstationary Policy (MNP), which consists of both the auxiliary Markov process and the original Markov process. MNP tries to keep balance of exploration and exploitation in reinforcement learning. Our experiment results show that the Q-learning agent using MNP converges to the optimal Q-values about 2.6 time faster than the uniform random selection on the average.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.91-105
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• 2001

Wholesale club is one of the fastest expanding retailer formats. Given its key features such as limited assortment and no promotion policy, the current paper provides a theory on why the wholesale clubs charge their members fixed annual fees. In a competitive setting with supermarkets, the proposed model demonstrates that the membership fee is the optimal reaction of wholesale clubs to supermarkets" sales promotion. More specifically, the positive amount of annual fee is only justified under the condition that there exists consumer heterogeneity in consumption rate and when the supermarket exercises price promotion on the product that the wholesale club carries. This paper describes the competition in a stylized fashion and derives the optimal membership fee under a scenario where retail promotion is present. This study is valuable in that it offers a different explanation on wholesale club membership fee than conventional wisdoms such as cost sharing and that it provides insights to the managers who consider no-fee format.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.25-47
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• 2010

CS is one of the major concerns of managers in the world because it is well known to be a key medium construct for firms' superior outcome. One of the major agents for CS management is retailers. Firms try to manage not only employees but also retailers to promote CS behaviors. And so diverse incentives are used to promote their CS behaviors under diverse channel setting such as multi-channel. However in spite of the rising needs there has been scarce studies on the optimal incentive structure for a manufacturer to offer competing retailers at the multi-channel. In this paper, we try to find better way for a manufacturer to promote the competing retailers' CS behaviors. We investigated how to promote the retailers' CS behavior via game-theoretic modeling. Especially, we focus on the possible incentive, CS bonus type reward introduced in the studies of Hauser, Simester, and Wernerfelt(1994) and Chu and Desai(1995). We build up a multi stage complete information game and derive a subgame perfect equilibrium using backward induction. Stages of the game are as following. (Stage 1) Manufacturer sets wholesale price(w) and CS bonus($\eta$). (Stage 2) Both retailers in competition set CS effort level($e_i$) and retail price($p_i$) simultaneously. (Stage 3) Consumers make purchasing decisions based on the manufacturer's initial reputation and retailers' CS efforts.

• The Journal of Fisheries Business Administration
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.31-39
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• 2011

This paper attempts to extend such analysis to the rather more difficult problem of optimal management of transnational fish stocks jointly owned by two countries. Transboundary fish such as Mackerel creates an incentive to harvest fish before a competitor does and leads to over-exploitation. This tendency is especially poignant for transnational stocks since, in the absence of an enforceable, international agreement, there is little or no reason for either government or the fishing industry to promote resource conservation and economic efficiency. In the current paper I examine a game theoretic setting in which cooperative management can provide more benefits than noncooperative management. A dynamic model of Mackerel fishery is combined with Nash's theory of two countries cooperative games. A characteristic function game approach is applied to describe the sharing of the surplus benefits from cooperation and noncooperation. A bioeconomic model was used to compare the economic yield of the optimal strategies for two countries, under joint maximization of net benefits in joint ocean. The results suggest as follows. First, the threat points represent the net benefits for two countries in absence of cooperation. The net benefits to Korea and China in threat points are 2,000 billion won(${\pi}^0_{KO}$) and 1,130 billion won(${\pi}^0_{CH}$). Total benefits are 3,130 billion won. Second, if two countries cooperate one with another, they reach the solution payoffs such as Pareto efficient. The net benefits to Korea and China in Pareto efficient are 2,785 billion won(${\pi}^0_{KO}$) and 1,605 billion won(${\pi}^0_{CH}$) or total benefits of 4,390 billion won : a gain of 1,260 billion won. Third, the different price effects under the two scenarios show that total benefit rise as price increases.

• Management Science and Financial Engineering
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.73-91
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• 2007

We investigate factors that influence the choice of high-share brands(HSBs) vs. low-share brands(LSBs) among various product and consumer characteristics related to brand-share perceptions. Specifically, using 8 product categories varying in terms of purchase decision involvement, we show how the influencing factors vary across the categories. At the general level that cover all the 8 categories, our hierarchical Bayesian regressions analysis shows that factors that favor high-share brands are purchase decision involvement, search goods, experience goods, price-quality relationship, positive network externalities, and price-prestige beliefs. Conversely, consumers who value variety seeking and need for uniqueness favor low-share brands. The effects of these factors, however, vary across product categories. The identification of these characteristics can help brand managers establish a more effective brand-share strategy in such areas as setting an optimal market share goal, extending a brand, and developing ad copy. Furthermore, our consumer segmentation analysis demonstrates the general market has two distinct segments - (1) a segment composed of HSB buyers(86%) and (2) a segment composed of LSB buyers(14%). The two segments are also shown to have different significant factors that explain their brand choice. Our segmentation analysis can help marketers establish a marketing strategy that targets a specific segment of interest.

• Proceedings of the Korean DIstribution Association Conference
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.91-105
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• 2000

Results of a study of the coordination effect in stocking and promotional markdown policies for a supply chain consisting of a retailer and a discount outlet (DCO) are reported here. We assume that the products are sold in two consecutive periods: Normal Sales Period (NSP) and subsequent Promotional Sales Period (PSP). When managers in the two periods coordinate, they share information on the demand forecast and jointly decide the stocking quantity, markdown time schedule, and markdown price to maximize mutual profit. In the absence of coordination, decisions are decentralized to optimize the individual party's objective function. Optimal coordination policy for the retailer/DCO problem setting is analyzed, and the coordination policy is compared with the uncoordinated policy to explore factors that make coordination an effective approach.