Promised Delivery Time and Capacity Games in Time Competition
讲座名称：
Promised Delivery Time and Capacity Games in Time Competition
讲座时间：
2009-10-20
讲座人：
Weixin Shang
形式：
校区：
兴庆校区
实践学分：
讲座内容：
We investigate competitive firm behaviors in industries where customers are sensitive to both promised delivery/waiting time (PDT) and quality of service (QoS) measured by on-time delivery rate. To study the competition in PDT at the marketing level with inflexible capacities, we construct an oligopoly game. We show that there exists a unique Nash equilibrium, which can be computed efficiently. The equilibrium QoS exhibits a switching surface structure with respect to capacities that determines firms' quality differentiation strategies. To study the competition in capacity at the strategic level, we construct a two-stage game in which the firms compete in capacity in stage 1 and in PDT in stage 2. We show that besides interior equilibria commonly considered in literature, we may have boundary equilibria. In particular, multiple boundary equilibria may exist in a market with inefficient players, and interestingly under some boundary equilibria a less efficient firm may gain customers from time competition. This study provides the following insights: (1) Efficiency, measured by residual capacity (without time competition) at the marketing level and the ratio of revenue rate to capacity cost rate at the strategic level, and the first-mover advantage determine the competitive advantage of the firms in time competition; (2) both the well-known prisoner's dilemma and non-equilibrium behaviors due to different preferences for equilibria (under multiple equilibria) may lead firms into the trap of time competition; (3) we identify the dual role of quality differentiation in time competition, either helping a more efficient firm to compete more effectively or helping a (possibly less efficient) firm to threaten competitors and protect the market advantage.
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