Optimal Grading Policies in the Online Acquisition of Used Products

Although online reverse commerce(recommerce)is convenient and efficient,it is not without caveats.It limits recommerce firms’flexibility to offer personalized prices and may cause mismatched grading between the firms and sellers of used products.This study examines a recommerce firm’s decision on grading criteria and prices.We find that the firm’s optimal policy exhibits two distinctly different patterns depending on the trade value of the product.We demonstrate that sellers’overestimate and underestimate errors have qualitatively different effects on firm profitability,and the effects crucially rely on the type of optimal policy.These findings can apprise firms on how to preset sorting criteria and prices as well as reduce grading errors.     

PRICE AND SERVICE COMPETITION WITH MAINTENANCE SERVICE BUNDLING

In many equipment manufacturing industries,firms compete with each other not only on products price,but also on maintenance service.More and more traditional products oriented firms are offering their customers products bundled with maintenance service(P&S bundles).In this study,we examine firms’ incentive to offer customers products bundling with long-term maintenance or repair support service in a duopoly competitive environment.When providing P&S bundles,a firm need to determine the service level(in terms of average response time guarantee for the service in this paper) to offer and needs to build a service facility to handle the maintenance service requirements.Based on the analysis of three sub-game models,we characterize the market conditions in which only one firm,both firms or neither firm will offer P&S bundles.Finally,we analyze the affects of serval market factors on firms’ strategy choices.     

Micro-mechanism and Dynamic Simulation of Spatial Agglomeration and Knowledge Spillover北大核心CSCD

According to the study of “new” new economic geography, there are three “black boxes” in terms of the setting of firm productivity, the mechanism of knowledge spillover between firms, and the sources of the increase in agglomerated areas’ productivity. Based on the ideas and methods of Complexity and Agent-based Computational Economics, we use Genetic Algorithms to encode firms’ knowledge structure and develop an agent-based spatial economic evolution simulation platform to simulate the process of firms’ productivity improvement and spatial agglomeration through knowledge spillover and innovation. Simulation experiments demonstrate that the knowledge spillover leads to dynamic heterogeneity of firms, and the flow of firms between regions is progressive and bidirectional. Then, in the early stage of the spatial agglomeration process, the increase in regional productivity is due to the “pull-up effect” formed by the entry of high-efficiency firms and the combined effect of knowledge spillover, while in the later stage of the agglomeration process, the increase in regional productivity is mainly due to local knowledge spillover and the “pull-down effect” of the entry of low-efficiency firms. © 2023 Editorial Borad of Complex Systems and Complexity Science. All rights reserved.     

Basic Research,Technological Innovation,and Firm Performance:The Empirical Analysis from Huawei Data

Since firms are the entities of technological innovation and basic research is the source of technological innovation, encouraging firms to conduct basic research has gained increasing attention.Using Huawei Technologies as a case study, this study employs a vector autoregressive(VAR) model and relevant data of the target firm from 2000 to 2019 to investigate the relationships between basic research, technological innovation, and firm performance. According to the findings, basic research has a ...     

BENCHMARKING ON-LINE SERVICES INDUSTRIES

1. Introduction Benchmarking delivers a “comparison of a company’s performance in certain areas with that of other firms in its industry and / or with those firms that are identified as world class competition in specific functions and operations” (Davis et al, (2004). It can also cut across traditional lines, providing opportunities for new and innovative ways to increase performance, and be a “search for industry best practices that lead to superior performance” (Camp, 1989; Hinton et …     

Operational Patterns of Industrial Symbiosis Network in Industrial Cluster District Based on Circular Economy Theory

Industrial symbiosis network （ISN） is an efficient organizational form for improving resource recycling and efficiency in industrial cluster district. Because of the variety of industrial cluster district formation model, the industrial symbiosis network is different with each other. Based on the circular economy theory, combing with international tendency of cluster district, the paper puts forward the relying-on-oriented industrial symbiosis network. Meanwhile, it also analyzes its organizational mechanism, operating pattern and environmental performance. Through the above efforts, we hope it could be helpful for industry cluster district sustainable development in China.     

Coordination of a fashion and textile supply chain with demand variations

Owing to the changing fashion trends and a volatile market situation,demand in fashion and textile (FT) industry is unpredictable and could vary and change completely in a short time,which makes it more difficult to coordinate a FT supply chain.A change in product preference due to fashion trends is the main reason why the demand of FT industry shows more variations than other industries.In this paper,we use a well known contract,the all-unit quantity discount policy(AQDP),to coordinate a FT supply chain with certain demand,and we further consider it under the demand variations scenario to investigate whether it can still coordinate the supply chain.In detail,before the selling season,an AQDP is provided by the manufacturer to the retailer,and under which the FT supply chain coordination achieved with a certain demand.During the selling season,demand variation is realized after an abrupt changing of fashion trends,therefore,the manufacturer may need to revise the original AQDP to insure the supply chain is still coordinated.Utilizing the mechanism design theory,we prove that:(i) while the traditional AQDP can coordinate the supply chain when no demand variations,it cannot always coordinate the supply chain after the demand variations;(ii) when the AQDP fails,we can use the proposed capacitated linear pricing policy(CLPP) to achieve a new coordination;(iii) a more dominant decision maker,who can set a higher profit goal,is favorable to stabilization of the supply chain system under demand variations.Numerical examples are proposed also to show our results.     

OPTIMAL AND INCENTIVE COMPATIBLE PRICING FOR HETEROGENEOUS PERIODS

This paper studies a service firm whose business time can be divided into several periods, each providing different value to customers. Heterogeneous service is a major reason resulting in imbalances between supply and demand. Since customers differ in their degree of impatience, firrns can use differential pricing mechanisms to optimize their objectives and match supply with demand in each period, by inducing customers to choose different periods. We study two types of firrns, an internal firm, the objective of which is to maximize the system＇s （including the f＇nan and all the customers） total net value, and a commercial firm, which aims to optimize its own profit. Though impatience factors are customers＇ private information, for each type of firm, we derive the optimal incentive compatible pricing policy, under which all the coming customers will follow the firm＇s assignment, that is, patient customers will buy the service in high-value periods, but their waiting time will be longer, while impatient customers will enter into the low-value periods, but they will be compensated by shorter waiting times. Furthermore, in the internal firm, we also prove that this mechanism enables the decentralization of decisions, while maintaining centralized system-wide optimality. Numerical analysis shows that when there is sufficient capacity, the internal firm does not always need to set lower prices than the commercial firm in every period.     

The Effect of Green Technology Adoption Strategy on Duopoly Competition

Given consumers' trade-offs between conventional economic and environmental attributes of products, we provide a game-theoretic model to explore the role of GTA strategy in duopoly competition by incorporating two salient features: Two product types — The green product produced by a firm with GTA strategy and the ordinary product produced by a firm without GTA strategy, and two consumer segments, i.e., the green consumers who are willing to pay for green products and the ordinary consumers who are willing to pay for ordinary products. Our analysis shows that GTA strategy may either increase or decrease the green firm's quality provision. The subtle relationship between the green firm's quality strategy and GTA strategy not only affects its own equilibrium performances but its rival's. We also find that two consumer segments may be better off in the presence of a lower GTA intensity. Additionally, although the GTA strategy benefits the environment, the GTA investment is not the more the better. Finally, we find that GTA strategy would lead to higher social welfare only when the GTA efficiency is high enough. Our work not only provides an alternative economic explanation why some firms choose to implement GTA strategy and some do not in reality, but gives managerial insights for firms with different GTA strategies as well as policy insights for the social planner.     

Coordination game model of co-opetition relationship on cluster supply chains

The research of cluster supply chains is a new direction and a hotspot of the industrial cluster theory. On the condition of the coordination game, the enterprises may be stuck on the non-efficient equilibrium status, which becomes an important problem that must be considered on cluster supply chains. A symmetrical coordination game model is constituted to describe the competition and cooperation relationship of the same-quality manufacturers on cluster supply chains. The methods of the non-cooperation game theory and the evolutionary game theory are respectively used to analyze the model, whose parameters＇ influences under each method are then compared. It can be concluded that the analysis of the evolutionary game theory is more realistic and practical. Finally, three approaches are considered to break away from being path-dependence locked-in non-efficient status during this coordination game evolutionary process, which provide the development of cluster supply chains with an effective forecasting and Pareto optimizing method.     

系族化经营与企业创新——来自集团附属上市公司的经验证据

Although familized-affiliated enterprises are common in the capital market, there is a lack of evidence on whether their innovation performance is better than that of only-child group-affiliated enterprises. This paper divided the listed companies affiliated to the Chinese group into familized group-affiliated enterprises and only-child group-affiliated enterprises, and examined the differences in innovation performance between the two types of organizations. It is found that the innovation performance of familized group-affiliated enterprises is significantly higher than that of only-child group-affiliated enterprises, and the innovation performance advantage of the familized group affiliation is more obvious in private than in state-owned enterprises. Moreover, the more the business of a familized group-affiliated firm is related to that of its parent company, the better the innovation performance of the affiliated firm will be. Conversely, the higher the diversification of a familized group, the lower the innovation performance of its affiliated firms will be. This paper shows that the familized group affiliation promotes the innovation of the affiliated enterprise. The findings enrich the understanding of the impact of the familized group on the innovation of affiliated firms, and have important practical implications for the innovation management of the group enterprise.     

The Causal Relationship Between Managerial Pay and Firm Performance： a Confirmatory Study with Structural Equation Model

We use structural equation technique to test four hypothesis relationships between the managerial pay and firm performance. Data from 208 Chinese listed companies is used, the evidence supports Hypothesis 3. It opens out that ownership concentration affects firm performance indirectly through managerial pay, and illustrates managerial pay is a valid mechanism in corporate governance to motivate manager to maximize firm‘s performance.At the same time, we find ownership concentration is negative to managerial pay, while IPO time and registration areas are positive to managerial pay obviously. It suggests that finding a correct solution to management incentive is the key to improve firm performance.     

Integrating OWA and Data Mining for Analyzing Customers Churn in E-Commerce

Customers are of great importance to E-commerce in intense competition.It is known that twenty percent customers produce eighty percent profiles.Thus,how to find these customers is very critical.Customer lifetime value(CLV) is presented to evaluate customers in terms of recency,frequency and monetary(RFM) variables.A novel model is proposed to analyze customers purchase data and RFM variables based on ordered weighting averaging(OWA) and K-Means cluster algorithm.OWA is employed to determine the weights of RFM variables in evaluating customer lifetime value or loyalty.K-Means algorithm is used to cluster customers according to RFM values.Churn customers could be found out by comparing RFM values of every cluster group with average RFM.Questionnaire is conducted to investigate which reasons cause customers dissatisfaction.Rank these reasons to help E-commerce improve services.The experimental results have demonstrated that the model is effective and reasonable.     

How Does the General Output Quantity Distribution of Suppliers Affect the Value-appropriation of Supply Chain？

This paper studies the problem of value-appropriation of supply chain, which is composed of a monopoly manufacturer downstream and multiple suppliers upstream. Firstly, we introduce two special examples in which output distribution of suppliers satisfy equal or equal-difference sequence. It is found that the more difference the distribution will be, the less preference will be gain by the manufacturer in the value-appropriation of supply chain. For the general distribution, the parameter ＂competitive residual＂ is introduced to score the influence of the suppliers＇ output quantity distribution on manufacturer＇s preference. The general conclusion will be given and it can directly deduce the conclusions above. Finally, we extend our basic conclusion to the more general situation in which the numbers of suppliers are not equal.     

Analyses of location-price game on networks with stochastic customer behavior and its heuristic algorithm

<正> In this paper,a two-stage model is developed to investigate the location strategy andthe commodity pricing strategy for a retail firm that wants to enter a spatial market with multiplecompetitive facilities,where a competitor firm is already operating as a monopoly with several outlets.Expected market shares are calculated based on the stochastic customer behavior on networks.Theauthors provide a sufficient condition for the existence of equilibrium prices in the price game for thefirst time.The existence and uniqueness of the pure strategy Nash equilibrium price with a specifiedutility function are proved in the subgame.A metaheuristic based on tabu search is proposed tosearch the optimal location-price solution of the model.In addition,the authors provide two numericalexamples to illustrate how to obtain the optimal solution and conduct sensitivity analysis.The analysisshows that the best location decision is robust for the follower firm,price game is more intense whenincomes of consumers are lower or there are more substitution products,and neither chain retail gainsfrom the price competition.     

MARKETING OBJECTIVES OF RETAILERS WITH DIFFERENTIATED GOODS： AN EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE

1. Introduction Conventionally, different marketingmanagers have different marketing objectives before making marketing decisions. For360 JOURNAL OF SYSTEMS SCIENCE AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING different marketing objectives, a firm has different quantity and/or pricing strategies. Furthermore, to a large degree the marketing objective strategies determine the profit and survival of a firm. Should a firm take the profit maximization strategy or the revenue maximization strategy? …     

Community Detection with the Weighted Parsimony Criterion

Community detection in networks has been studied extensively in the last decade. Many criteria, expressing the quality of the partitions obtained, as well as a few exact algorithms and a large number of heuristics have been proposed. The parsimony criterion consists in minimizing the number of edges added or removed from the given network in order to transform it into a set of disjoint cliques.Recently Zhang, Qiu and Zhang have proposed a weighted parsimony model in which a weight coefficient is introduced to balance the numbers of inserted and deleted edges. These authors propose rules to select a good value of the coefficient, use simulated annealing to find optimal or near-optimal solutions and solve a series of real and artificial instances. In the present paper, an algorithm is proposed for solving exactly the weighted parsimony problem for all values of the parameter. This algorithm is based on iteratively solving the problem for a set of given values of the parameter using a row generation algorithm. This procedure is combined with a search procedure to find all lowest breakpoints of the value curve(i.e., the weighted sum of inserted and deleted edges). Computational results on a series of artificial and real world networks from the literature are reported. It appears that several partitions for the same network may be informative and that the set of solutions usually contains at least one intuitively appealing partition.     

LIMIT BEHAVIOUR OF SOLUTIONS TO EQUIVALUED SURFACE BOUNDARY VALUE PROBLEM FOR PARABOLIC EQUATIONS

In this paper,we discuss the limit behaviour of solutions to equivalued surface boundayr value problem for parabolic equatiopns when the equivalued surface boundary shriks to a point and the space dimension of the domain is two or more.     

Applying Frameworks for Cognitive Services in IIoT

The technology,which enables creating new types of products,processes and services(i.e.,things),which outcomes alter traditional competition and industry boundaries and create new lasting value.The digitalization process uses digital technologies to provide the possibilities of new revenue and value-producing,i.e.,it changes business models and offers new value propositions.This change is ongoing.The most important ten strategic technology trends in 2019 include Edge computing,Blockchain,event and data-driven strategies,Digital Twins,and the maintenance of transparency(i.e.,traceability),Intelligent Apps and Analytics(Gartner 2018).In this paper,we experiment with the capabilities of intelligent applications to match the industrial business needs.This paper aims to bring insights closer to business objectives.Digitalization’s technological advantages can be achieved through data-driven strategies and wherein cognitive services are integrated into IoT(Internet of Things)and big data.We experiment with the Industrial IoT(IIoT)business models and value propositions to match the intelligent insights of cognitive solutions to business objectives.The IIoTs support and demand transparency and thus also data-driven objective insights,and because cognitive solutions can enhance insights on a product,a process or service and therefore provide measurable business objectives.Functional indicators enable interconnected smart things to collaborate.