Optimal pricing and ordering strategies for dual-channel retailing with different shipping policies

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>In this paper, considering dual-channel retailing (online channel and offline channel), we study the pricing and ordering problem under different shipping policies. In this research, we mainly consider three shipping policies: without shipping price (OSP), with shipping price (WSP) and conditional free shipping (CFP). Based on the principle of maximum utility, we firstly obtain the probability of demand for the online and offline channels and further model the pricing and ordering problem under the three shipping policies. Further, avoiding the curse of dimensionality, the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) method is employed to solve the problem to obtain the optimal pricing and ordering policy. Finally, we conduct some numerical experiments to compare the optimal pricing and ordering quantity under the three different shipping policies and reveal some managerial insights. The results show that the conditional free shipping policy is better than the other two policies, and stimulates the increase of demand to gain more profit.</p>

A POLICY-MAKING FRAMEWORK FOR ENHANCING THE KAOHSIUNG PORT’S ECONOMIC RESILIENCE

This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled ‘Influential indicators for measuring Kaohsiung port resilience’ presented at the International Forum on Shipping, Port, and Airports (IFSPA 2013), Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, 3–5 June 2013. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method commonly used in the issue of decision making was performed in this study to propose a policy-making framework for enhancing the Kaohsiung port’s economic resilience. A three-level hierarchical structure with 19 attributes is proposed and tested. Results indicate that adjusting the shipping policy is perceived as the most critical strategic dimension to enhance container port resilience. This is followed by increasing incentives, adjusting port operational strategy and exploiting market opportunities. Overall, results show that the five most important strategies for enhancing international container ports’ resilience are training of international marketing personnel, economic deregulation of shipping market across the Taiwan-Strait; subsidising the throughput of containers transhipment, subsidising coastal shipping operations and the alteration of dedicated terminals for rent. This study contributes in proposing a policy-making framework to enhance the container port’s economic resilience, and this framework could also be generalised to other ports.

INTEGRATION PROCESSES CHARACTERISTICS IN THE GLOBAL TRADE SHIPPING SYSTEM

Topicality. The shipping policy macroeconomic level takes the central place in the management system of merchant shipping and investment activity according to the development efficiency criteria. The economy is characterized by the building-up of integration processes at the current stage. Increasing production internationalization and globalization leads to the internationalization and globalization of transport and logistics systems and distribution networks. These processes activate the intensity and increase the international freight traffic volume. At the same time, globalization has dramatically changed the volume and model of freight traffic and increased the requirements for both international and local transport systems. Aim and tasks. The central task of the investigations is the choice of a criteria-based assessment system of economic and investment decisions. The study is aimed at clarifying the regularities of the merchant shipping individual segments functioning and at developing recommendations for solving urgent current and future projects for the national shipping potential development. Research results. The transport system efficiency is the economy development important factor. The main transport potential feature is the need of high level of regulation by country. This is due to the fact that: the development of transit potential is a capital-intensive process, and requires long-term investments; it has the monopolistic nature of the elements of the transport system; it needs for a special functional and legal regime of work; it is the reason of environmental problems because of increasing volumes and traffic intensity; it is especially important for national security. Macroeconomic goals to ensure the export transport services development, to use transit potential more efficiently, to increase the consumer transport competitiveness on the transport services international market could be actualized by the integration technology strategy implementation. Conclusion. The implementation of transport potential according to the integration criteria is an important factor of the modern economic development of the country, as, first of all, it is growth of employment, business activity, investments and tax revenues, on the other hand, it assists in integrating the Ukrainian economy into the European and world economic systems. The making economic decisions theory in the maritime transport system in the shipping market globalization context should be taken into account during the urgent economic problems solution.

Software Shipping Time Estimation for Markovian Change-Point Reliability Model

A Markovian software reliability model is known as one of the useful models which enable us to describe the details on the dynamic behavior of software reliability growth process with imperfect debugging activities. As the application of this model for software development management, we discuss software shipping time estimation based on the extended Markovian software reliability model considering with the effect of change-point, which is the testing-time when the characteristic of the software failure-occurrence or fault-detection phenomenon changes notably. Especially in our discussion on the software shipping time estimation, we derive an analytical software shipping policy under certain software reliability objective and show numerical examples of the application of the software shipping policy by using actual software reliability data. Finally, we give some useful consideration on the relationship between the software shipping time and the software reliability growth process for conducing quality-oriented software development management.