共享经济双边市场中动态定价策略研究

Peer-to-peer sharing economy, such as ride-sharing services, has prospered and received tremendous attention in the last few years. In contrast to the traditional two-side market, the dynamics of the sharing platform have distinctive differences. On the supply side, the capacity and the working schedule of service providers are no longer centrally controlled by the sharing platform. Instead, they determine their own work schedule and the platform could only impact their decision indirectly through compensation. On the demand side, customers’ spending decisions and suppliers’ participation decisions will be more tightly interacted with each other since the platform could instantly broadcast dynamic price information to them to influence their decisions. For the platform, decision makers may have more interests in measures other than profit, such as gross revenue, the number of matched services (which implies market size), service response rate, and social welfares which align with platform’s strategic objective of growing sharing market. Given these unique characteristics, we propose to investigate dynamic pricing problems in context of the two-side market of peer-to-peer sharing economy. We will formulate the supply and demand dynamics through data driven process with real data, study the best price, wage, and new equilibrium, improve and compare strategies under different market circumstance to derive practical guidance. We will also conduct research on extending models to incorporate complicated features such as mixed two-side market and market competition. We target to develop new frameworks and solution approaches to advance the theory study in revenue management related areas. Moreover, we will collaborate with practitioners in the sharing economy and look forward to implementing research results in real applications.

近年来点对点共享经济的迅猛发展为人瞩目，如何采用合适的定价策略吸引买卖双方调节需求和供给，直接关系到共享平台的生存与发展。在共享经济新模式下，卖家灵活自主的参与方式使得平台不能直接控制供给量，买卖双方的定价互相影响，同时平台关注收益、交易量、社会福利等多种目标。针对这些特点，本课题计划立足于企业实践数据，从“买卖方的参与特点”和“平台的需求特点”两个角度出发，对随机环境下的双边市场定价机制进行深入研究；同时结合现实中企业使用的决策模型，对不同市场模式下的最优决策进行对比分析，从而为企业收益管理提供有益的参考。课题还将进一步把研究模型扩展到更为复杂的情形，包括考虑买卖双重参与者与多个平台竞争等情况。希望通过本项目研究，逐步建立针对点对点共享经济双边市场特点的动态定价与收益管理的决策模型，探索新的理论与研究方法，从而推动学科前沿的发展；并积极开拓成果的实践应用，帮助我国共享经济企业提高竞争力。

在过去三年里，课题组围绕共享经济双边市场中动态定价策略这一研究目标进行了深入的探索。在理论工具创新方面，课题组研究了：（1）适用于共享经济中供需关系具有周期性变化的Multi-Armed-Bandit决策模型；（2）适用于不确定性需求下的鲁棒优化决策方法。在解决实践问题方面，课题组研究了：（3）基于收益与顾客效用的共享单车定价策略；（4）竞技中零和游戏模型下的数据分析与平衡态策略求解。上述研究取得了较好的学术成果，课题组共完成了工作论文6篇，其中有3篇论文处于本领域重要学术刊物Operations Research、Manufacturing & Service Operations Management、和Informs Journal on Computing的审稿中。在项目经费的支持下，课题组共有5人次在管理科学与工程领域的知名国际学术会议上做了学术报告，多次进行了学术交流活动。在课题实施过程中，课题组已经有9名硕士生与3名本科生顺利毕业。.