Dynamic Pricing through Sampling Based Optimization

In this paper we develop an approach to dynamic pricing that combines ideas from data-driven and robust optimization to address the uncertain and dynamic aspects of the problem. In our setting, a firm off ers multiple products to be sold over a fixed discrete time horizon. Each product sold consum...

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Main Authors: Lobel, Ruben, Perakis, Georgia
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Operations Research Center
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Airline Group of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies 2014
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/88129
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0888-9030
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author Lobel, Ruben
Perakis, Georgia
author2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Operations Research Center
author_facet Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Operations Research Center
Lobel, Ruben
Perakis, Georgia
author_sort Lobel, Ruben
collection MIT
description In this paper we develop an approach to dynamic pricing that combines ideas from data-driven and robust optimization to address the uncertain and dynamic aspects of the problem. In our setting, a firm off ers multiple products to be sold over a fixed discrete time horizon. Each product sold consumes one or more resources, possibly sharing the same resources among di fferent products. The firm is given a fixed initial inventory of these resources and cannot replenish this inventory during the selling season. We assume there is uncertainty about the demand seen by the fi rm for each product and seek to determine a robust and dynamic pricing strategy that maximizes revenue over the time horizon. While the traditional robust optimization models are tractable, they give rise to static policies and are often too conservative. The main contribution of this paper is the exploration of closed-loop pricing policies for di fferent robust objectives, such as MaxMin, MinMax Regret and MaxMin Ratio. We introduce a sampling based optimization approach that can solve this problem in a tractable way, with a con fidence level and a robustness level based on the number of samples used. We will show how this methodology can be used for data-driven pricing or adapted for a random sampling optimization approach when limited information is known about the demand uncertainty. Finally, we compare the revenue performance of the di fferent models using numerical simulations, exploring the behavior of each model under diff erent sample sizes and sampling distributions.
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spelling mit-1721.1/881292022-10-01T12:03:45Z Dynamic Pricing through Sampling Based Optimization Lobel, Ruben Perakis, Georgia Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Operations Research Center Sloan School of Management Lobel, Ruben Perakis, Georgia In this paper we develop an approach to dynamic pricing that combines ideas from data-driven and robust optimization to address the uncertain and dynamic aspects of the problem. In our setting, a firm off ers multiple products to be sold over a fixed discrete time horizon. Each product sold consumes one or more resources, possibly sharing the same resources among di fferent products. The firm is given a fixed initial inventory of these resources and cannot replenish this inventory during the selling season. We assume there is uncertainty about the demand seen by the fi rm for each product and seek to determine a robust and dynamic pricing strategy that maximizes revenue over the time horizon. While the traditional robust optimization models are tractable, they give rise to static policies and are often too conservative. The main contribution of this paper is the exploration of closed-loop pricing policies for di fferent robust objectives, such as MaxMin, MinMax Regret and MaxMin Ratio. We introduce a sampling based optimization approach that can solve this problem in a tractable way, with a con fidence level and a robustness level based on the number of samples used. We will show how this methodology can be used for data-driven pricing or adapted for a random sampling optimization approach when limited information is known about the demand uncertainty. Finally, we compare the revenue performance of the di fferent models using numerical simulations, exploring the behavior of each model under diff erent sample sizes and sampling distributions. National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant 0556106-CMII) National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant 0824674-CMII) Singapore-MIT Alliance 2014-06-30T16:18:47Z 2014-06-30T16:18:47Z 2011-10 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/ConferencePaper 978-1-61839-446-0 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/88129 Lobel, Ruben, and Georgia Perakis. "Dynamic pricing through sampling based optimization." The 51st Airline Group of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (AGIFORS) Annual Proceedings, Antalya, Turkey, October 10-14, 2011. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0888-9030 en_US http://toc.proceedings.com/13874webtoc.pdf The 51st Airline Group of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (AGIFORS) Annual Proceedings Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Airline Group of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies SSRN
spellingShingle Lobel, Ruben
Perakis, Georgia
Dynamic Pricing through Sampling Based Optimization
title Dynamic Pricing through Sampling Based Optimization
title_full Dynamic Pricing through Sampling Based Optimization
title_fullStr Dynamic Pricing through Sampling Based Optimization
title_full_unstemmed Dynamic Pricing through Sampling Based Optimization
title_short Dynamic Pricing through Sampling Based Optimization
title_sort dynamic pricing through sampling based optimization
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/88129
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0888-9030
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