Search Results (28)

(1) Background: Facing the challenges of a post-pandemic period and the Ukraine War and recognising the gap in scientific research on the application of revenue management (RM) in the Portuguese hotel industry, the main objective of this study is to identify the most effective and least appropriate RM practices for use in periods of low demand and crises, reflecting the financial sustainability perspective. The theoretical framework of this study focuses on the main RM practices, grouping them into price and non-price strategies. (2) Methods: A quantitative methodology was employed, collecting information from Portuguese hotels through an online questionnaire, and statistical analysis using Mann–Whitney and Chi-square tests was conducted. (3) Results: Hotels offered discounts during the pandemic, but room rates were reduced during the recovery period. These findings also revealed that commonly used techniques were the best available rate (BAR) and rate fences, particularly during the pandemic. Quality, brand image, strategic partnerships, and marketing actions are recognised as essential. However, loyalty programs, length of stay (LOS) control, rate parity, and bundled services are not commonly implemented despite their importance during periods of low demand. Larger hotels, five-star hotels, and members of international chains applied more RM practices than smaller four-star independent hotels. (4) Originality: This study provides original and valuable insights into increasing hotel revenues and occupancy rates during future periods of low demand, which benefit financial sustainability. Full article

To boost the sustainable development of energy and the environment, a new power system with clean energy sources has been proposed by the Chinese government and traditional coal-fired power units are being transformed into regulation service providers for this new energy power system. Then, in this study, complementary power generation cooperation between traditional coal-fired power and new energy power producers is analyzed and discussed, and the energy quota agents, power sellers, are also included. Based on the cooperation game idea, different decision-making models of the tripartite power entities are elaborately constructed. Then, according to the price linkage mechanism between new energy and traditional thermal power, the profit of all power subjects is calculated and the profit allocation process is also analyzed. The conclusions show that the similarity of the two wholesale power price coefficients verifies the symmetry of the cooperative status of power producers. For BPC and SPC quota patterns, for example, BPC is bundled with new energy power and green certificates, whereas SPC is separate. Under the SPC pattern, there is a critical value for effective cooperation between the two power producers in the price range of traditional thermal power or new energy, which can achieve a win–win situation of increasing economic benefits and the consumption scale. Under the BPC pattern, the dynamic benefit compensation mechanism, which is the corrected Shapley value based on the RPS quota ratio, can solve the compressed profit of traditional coal-fired power producers. In contrast, the overall effect of profit allocation using the nucleolar method is not ideal. This study aims to give full play to the elastic induction effect of RPS to promote the sustainable transformation of traditional thermal power energy, especially combining the market mechanism to encourage traditional coal-fired power units to improve green technology to advance the construction of the green power market in China. Full article

Fine-needle aspiration biopsy is crucial for modern diagnostics of endoscopic procedures and thus an efficient and reliable method for increasing biopsy yields is urgently needed. In our study, we address the limited availability and high price of the rapid onsite evaluation (ROSE) technique by introducing the technique of near-infrared on-site evaluation (NOSE) consisting of spectral measurement of near-infrared radiation (NIR) transmitted through the evaluated material. For this purpose, we designed a special optical probe consisting of two fibres, of which one is a source fibre and the second is a detector fibre. The distal ends of both fibres are brought together into one bundle which is, with the help of a special extension, applied to a cuvette with an analysed sample at a defined distance from the cuvette bottom and fixed in place. A portion of the NIR radiation received by the detector fibre after it propagates through the sample then depends on the optical and therefore morphological characteristics of the sample. Based on the measured spectral curve, we can calculate the attenuation coefficient curve and subsequently the parameter of the sample richness and the parameter characterising the autofluorescence peak as well. We found that the value of our introduced parameters is in significant relation to sample richness as well as to sample malignity. NOSE evaluation of EBUS/EUSb (endobronchial/oesophageal ultrasound bronchoscopy) specimens can be considered an easy new technique aiming to improve sampling diagnostic accuracy and to diminish costs related to the presence of a cytopathologist and related instrumentation in the endoscopy suite. Full article

Transitional care programs (TCPs), where hospital care team members repeatedly follow up with discharged patients, aim to reduce post-discharge hospital or emergency department (ED) utilization and healthcare costs. We examined the effectiveness of TCPs at reducing healthcare costs, hospital readmissions, and ED visits. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) program adjudicated claims files and electronic health records from Greenville Memorial Hospital, Greenville, SC, were accessed. Data on post-discharge 30- and 90-day ED visits and readmissions, total costs, and episodes with costs over BPCI target prices were extracted from November 2017 to July 2020 and compared between the “TCP-Graduates” (N = 85) and “Did Not Graduate” (DNG) (N = 1310) groups. As compared to the DNG group, the TCP-Graduates group had significantly fewer 30-day (7.1% vs. 14.9%, p = 0.046) and 90-day (15.5% vs. 26.3%, p = 0.025) readmissions, episodes with total costs over target prices (25.9% vs. 36.6%, p = 0.031), and lower total cost/episode (USD 22,439 vs. USD 28,633, p = 0.018), but differences in 30-day (9.4% vs. 11.2%, p = 0.607) and 90-day (20.0% vs. 21.9%, p = 0.680) ED visits were not significant. TCP was associated with reduced post-discharge hospital readmissions, total care costs, and episodes exceeding target prices. Further studies with rigorous designs and individual-level data should test these findings. Full article

This paper builds a theoretical framework to model individualization in online markets. In a market with consumers of varying levels of demand, a seller offers multiple product bundles and prices. Relative to brick-and-mortar stores, an online seller can use pricing algorithms that can observe a buyer’s online behavior and infer a buyer’s type. I build a generalized model of price discrimination with Bayesian learning where a seller offers different bundles of the product that are sized and priced contingent on the posterior probability that the consumer is of a given type. Bayesian learning allows the seller to individualize product menus over time as new information becomes available. I explain how this strategy differs from first- or second-degree price discrimination models and how Bayesian learning over time affects equilibrium values and welfare. Full article

In response to the challenges faced by tourism managers in devising effective pricing strategies to overcome the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aims to make a valuable contribution to the existing literature on tourism management and marketing. Specifically, we investigate the pricing strategies that tourists are most likely to prefer in the aftermath of the pandemic. To achieve this, we conducted semi-structured interviews with a sample size of experienced tourists in Egypt. Our findings reveal that tourists exhibit a strong inclination towards hedonic and bundling pricing strategies. This suggests that tourism managers should prioritize the incorporation of these strategies into their post-pandemic business plans. However, it is crucial for managers to carefully consider tourists’ behavioral responses to dynamic and pay-what-you-want pricing strategies, as these are influenced by various constraints that necessitate careful attention. Furthermore, our study highlights potential negative consequences associated with the implementation of the dual-pricing strategy following the pandemic. This strategy has the potential to compromise tourists’ intentions to utilize certain services, thereby leading to unfavorable behavioral outcomes for tourism destinations. The implications of this study are of practical significance for tourism managers seeking to design more effective pricing strategies to capitalize on the opportunities presented by the post-pandemic recovery period. By understanding tourists’ preferences and considering the potential drawbacks associated with certain pricing strategies, managers can make informed decisions that promote the sustainable and successful revival of the tourism industry. Moreover, our study employed the checkpoints method, which allowed us to identify respondents’ priorities for the pricing strategies during the crisis, further enhancing the validity and reliability of our findings. Full article

To improve the market competitiveness of agricultural e-retailers, we offer an interactive bundle pricing strategy (IBPS). Compared to existing fixed bundling strategies, IBPS takes into account the variability of customer needs and provides consumers with more and more flexible choice opportunities. As more and more consumers tend to buy more environmentally friendly and healthy organic produce, a hybrid bundle pricing model for organic and inorganic produce is developed with the goal of maximizing retailers’ profit and optimizing consumers’ surplus, taking into account consumers’ organic preferences. Meanwhile, we introduce a free shipping strategy to further stimulate consumption. Then, we propose a heuristic algorithm to solve it and derive the optimal price for various bundled packages. Through numerical analysis, we draw some conclusions and propose corresponding management insights: (1) Compared with traditional online retailing methods, IBPS can effectively stimulate consumption and increase retailers’ profits; (2) as the free shipping threshold increases, total profits show a trend of first increasing and then decreasing, indicating that an appropriate free shipping threshold can optimize retailers’ profits; (3) as consumers’ green preferences increase, the sales of organic products increase while the total profit rises, so it is suggested that retailers increase consumer green preference through appropriate advertising; (4) the higher the consumption level, the higher the total value of consumers’ word purchases, so retailers can appropriately increase the free shipping threshold at high consumption levels. Full article

This paper shows that some commodity currencies (from Chile, Iceland, Norway, South Africa, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) predict the synchronization of metals and energy commodities. This relationship links the present-value theory for exchange rates and its connection with commodity export economies’ fundamentals, where prospective commodity price fluctuations affect exchange rates. Predicting commodity market return synchronization is critical for dealing with systemic risk, market efficiency, and financial stability since synchronization reduces the benefits of diversification and increases the probability of contagion in financial markets during economic and financial crises. Using network methods coupled with in-sample and out-of-sample econometrics models, we find evidence that a fall in the return of commodity-currencies (dollar appreciation) predicts an increase in commodity market synchronization and, consequently, in commodity market systemic risk. This discovery is consistent with a transitive capacity phenomenon, suggesting that commodity currencies have a predictive ability over commodities that extend beyond the commodity bundle that a country produces. The latter behavior would be exacerbated by the high financialization of commodities and strong co-movement of commodity markets. Our paper is part of a vigorously growing literature that has recently measured and predicted systemic risk caused by synchronization, combining a complex systems perspective and financial network analysis. Full article

Subscription-based news platforms (such as “Apple News+” or “Readly”) that bundle content from different publishers into one comprehensive package and offer it to media users at a fixed monthly rate are a new way of accessing and consuming digital journalism. These services have received little attention in journalism studies, although they differ greatly from traditional media products and distribution channels. This article empirically investigates the perception of journalism platforms based on eight qualitative focus group discussions with 55 German news consumers. Results show that the central characteristics these platforms should fulfill in order to attract users are strikingly similar to the characteristics of media platforms from the music and video industries, in particular regarding price points, contract features, and modes of usage. Against this background, the potential and perspectives of a subscription-based news platform for journalism’s societal role are discussed. Full article

We consider the problem of allocating heterogeneous objects to agents with money, where the number of agents exceeds that of objects. Each agent can receive at most one object, and some objects may remain unallocated. A bundle is a pair consisting of an object and a payment. An agent’s preference over bundles may not be quasi-linear, which exhibits income effects or reflects borrowing costs. We investigate the class of rules satisfying one of the central properties of fairness in the literature, egalitarian-equivalence, together with the other desirable properties. We propose (i) a novel class of rules that we call the independent second-prices rules with variable constraints and (ii) a novel condition on constraints that we call respecting the valuation coincidence. Then, we establish that the independent second-prices rule with variable constraints that respects the valuation coincidence is the only rule satisfying egalitarian-equivalence, strategy-proofness, individual rationality, and no subsidy for losers. Our characterization result implies that in the case of three or more agents, there are few opportunities for agents to receive objects under a rule satisfying egalitarian-equivalence and the other desirable properties, which highlights the strong tension between egalitarian-equivalence and efficiency. In contrast, in the case of two agents and a single object, egalitarian-equivalence is compatible with efficiency. Full article

Defining prices and in which consumers’ segments to put the company’s efforts within competitive markets selling bundles is challenging. On the one hand, methodologies focused on competition are usually appropriate for analyzing market dynamics but not for helping decision makers in specific tasks regarding pricing. On the other hand, simplistic cost-oriented methods may fail to capture consumer behavior. We see these characteristics in such markets as telecommunications, retail, and financial service providers, among others. We propose a framework to support pricing decisions for products with multiple attributes in competitive markets, considering consumers’ willingness to pay and multiple segments. The proposed model is a nonlinear profit maximization probabilistic problem. We represent the demands for products and services through a multinomial logit model and then include consumers’ maximum willingness to pay through soft constraints within the demand function. Since the profit function is non-concave, we deal with the nonlinearity and the multiple optima to solve the model through an equivalent nonlinear model and a particle swarm optimization (PSO) heuristic. This setting allows us to find the prices that achieve equilibrium for the game among the firms that maximize their profits. Including the features shown, our approach enables decision makers to set prices optimally. Estimating the parameters needed to run our model requires more effort than traditional multinomial approaches. Nevertheless, we show that it is essential to include these aspects because the optimal prices are different from those obtained with more simplified models that do not have them. Additionally, there are well-established methodologies available to estimate those parameters. Both the determination of the first-order optimality conditions and the PSO implementation allow to find equilibria, quantify the effect of the consumers’ maximum willingness to pay, and assess the competition’s relevance. As complementary material, we analyze a case from a Chilean telecommunications company and show the results regarding price decisions and market share effects. According to our literature review, these aspects have not been handled and quantified jointly, as we do to support pricing. Full article

In this paper, we compare a multi-round, second-price, sealed-bid bundle auction and a single-item, sequential, second-price, sealed-bid auction for berth slot leasing for vessels (roll-on/roll-off passenger vessels and/or cruise ships) at a public marine terminal. The bundle auction mechanism is designed to maximize port operator profits by auctioning berth (time) slots in groups. The framework is tested using simulation by varying: the number of roll-on/roll-off passenger/cruise ship operating companies; the number of slots they bid for; and the mechanism design with regards to the winner determination, slot valuation, and max to min slot bid ratio among the bidders. The results indicate that neither auction type is a clear winner, and depending on the assumptions, a terminal operator should choose one over the other. The results from this study can be used by terminal operators, given their knowledge and/or assumptions on slot valuations and demand, to select a winner-determination policy and the minimum number of slots they allow players to bid for when designing the auction of their berth capacity to maximize their profits. Full article

Since the commercialization of 5G, the government has actively encouraged 5G industry chain enterprises to accelerate the progress of 5G. Bundling is a popular means to expand 5G subscribers and improve 5G market coverage. Considering the characteristics of bundling, this study establishes a secondary supply chain composed of a terminal manufacturer and a telecom operator under the condition of network externality strength. In this supply chain, the product quality of the terminal manufacturer is complementary to the service quality of the telecom operator. Using Steinberg’s theory, we derive the optimal value of each decision variable in a centralized mode and a decentralized mode and take profit maximization as the goal. This paper also designs a contract of bidirectional cost sharing and revenue compensation for supply chain coordination. Finally, the influence of network externality strength and a mass-additive factor on the supply chain is discussed using numerical analysis. The results show that higher network externality strength has a significant impact on product pricing, the quality of each entity and the profit of the supply chain. At the same time, the degree of complementarity between the terminal product quality and the telecommunications service quality affects whether consumers choose to buy contract products. A higher degree of complementarity promotes the market inflow into high-end consumers. Full article

The increasing popularity of ride-hailing applications has given rise to a new channel in which ride-hailing platforms are bundled into aggregation platforms to earn additional orders by charging commissions and slotting fees. Such bundled channels, unlike traditional reseller electronic ones, may flutter prices, service levels, market demands, and then further affect their profits. These divergent attitudes raise an interesting and key question about whether and under what conditions bundled channels should be introduced to ride-hailing platforms. In this paper, we provide an analytical framework for ride-hailing and aggregation platforms in unbundled and bundled scenarios, respectively. We build a Stackelberg game model in which ride-hailing and aggregation platforms as leaders obtain prices by constructing Nash equilibria, while drivers as followers determine service levels given to two platforms. Drivers’ best responses in terms of service levels for two platforms, as well as platforms’ optimal pricing strategies and profits are achieved. To capture access conditions of the ride-hailing platform and the profit contention between two platforms, we further conduct sensitivity analysis on cost coefficients of service levels, price and cross-price substitutions, service level and cross-service level substitutions, revenue-sharing ratio, cost, as well as commission and slotting fee. Based on numerical examples and analysis of the results, some interesting managerial insights about bundling strategies are gained for ride-hailing platforms. Full article

Product bundling is a common retail marketing strategy. The bundling of food items has the potential to increase profits in the grocery sector, particularly for fresh produce, which often has lower profit margins. Although prior work suggests consumers prefer bundles because they require less cognitive effort to select, no study has yet experimentally manipulated cognitive load when food bundles are included in the choice set. To test whether bundle preference differs when cognitive resources are constrained, a grocery shopping experiment was conducted with 250 consumers in the midwestern U.S., in a laboratory that featured a grocery store display. Consumers who grocery shopped under cognitive load had a higher odds of selecting a food bundle even when the bundle did not offer a price discount. Results suggest food bundles may be preferred because they require less cognitive effort to process, which could benefit consumers by simplifying the grocery shopping experience. Additional factors found to influence food bundle selection included whether the bundled items were perceived as being complementary and hunger levels. Food bundles could help lessen cognitive effort associated with grocery shopping and may especially appeal to those who do not enjoy food shopping. Full article