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                                                     Seminar

             Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management
                                  The Chinese University of Hong Kong

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Title

:

Selling to Heterogeneous Customers with Uncertain Valuations under Returns Policies

　

　

　

Speaker

:

Prof. Qian Liu

　

　

Department of Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management

　

　

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

　

　

　

Date

:

Feb 24th, 2010 (Wednesday)

　

　

　

Time

:

4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

　

　

　

Venue

:

Room 513

　

　

William M.W. Mong Engineering Building

　

　

(Engineering Building Complex Phase 2)

　

　

CUHK

　

　

　

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Abstract:
　

We consider a firm that sells a product with a finite capacity to a market with a random population size. Each customer\'s valuation of the product consists of two components: the customer\'s intrinsic value of the product which is privately known by him before purchase, and the product\'s fitness which is ex ante uncertain and revealed to him only after purchase. The customers are heterogeneous in the sense that they differ in their intrinsic values. Because of its lack of knowledge about the customer\'s intrinsic value before purchase and the product fitness after purchase, the firm essentially faces a sequential screening problem. It has been established in the literature that with unlimited capacity, it is optimal for the firm to offer a menu of returns contracts simultaneously to serve the entire population. However, we show that this optimality result no longer holds when the firm has a finite capacity. In particular, we show that the firm is better off by offering a menu of returns contracts sequentially, i.e., offering one at a time.


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Biography:
　

Qian Liu is currently an assistant professor in the department of Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Her research interest includes revenue management and pricing, consumer behavior in operations management, and supply chain contracts. She received the Ph.D. degree in Decision, Risk and Operations from Columbia University in 2006, and the B.E. and M.E. in Control Theory and Control Engineering from Tsinghua University in 1998 and 2001, respectively.


************************* ALL ARE WELCOME ************************

　

　

　

Host

:

Prof. Zhou Xiang, Sean

Tel

:

(852) 2609-8336

Email

:

zhoux@se.cuhk.edu.hk

　

　

　

Enquiries

:

Prof. Nan Chen or Prof. Sean X. Zhou

　

:

Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management

　

　

CUHK

Website

:

http://www.se.cuhk.edu.hk/~seg5810

Email

:

seg5810@se.cuhk.edu.hk

　

　

　

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