主讲人

（单位）

郭晓朦

(香港理工大学)

主持人

（单位）

陈静

（电影天堂 ）

讲座时间

2026年8月18日上午10点

讲座地点

综合楼314

主讲人简介

Dr. Xiaomeng Guo is a Professor in the Faculty of Business at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She received her bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Physics from Tsinghua University and her Ph.D. in Operations Management from Washington University in St. Louis. Her research interests include the operations–marketing interface, behavioral operations management, socially responsible operations, and supply chain management. Her research has been published in leading journals such as Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Journal of Marketing Research, and Production and Operations Management. She currently serves as a Senior Editor for Production and Operations Management and an Associate Editor for Omega.

讲座内容摘要

Retailers increasingly use randomized discount timing, such as unannounced flash sales, to influence strategic customer behavior, yet its advantages over traditional pricing strategies remain unclear. We develop a model with high and low valuation customers who strategically choose when to purchase, and compare three policies: single pricing, fixed discount timing, and randomized discount timing. We show that the retailer’s expected profit is independent of the discount time distribution and fully characterize the optimal high and low prices under randomized discount timing. The optimal low price always equals the valuation of low valuation customers. Interestingly, the optimal high price may increase in the total amount of inventory, which is not observed under fixed discount timing. We also show that randomized discount timing can outperform fixed discount timing when the customer segments are similar in size, their valuations are significantly different, and the inventory is about the size of the low valuation segment. Under these conditions, discount uncertainty induces high valuation customers to buy at a higher price, which improves revenue. However, when the retailer is not required to offer a discount, single pricing combined with fixed discount timing dominates randomized discount timing: randomness in discount timing encourages excessive waiting, reduces high price sales, and leads to more sales at the low price. Similar results hold when we consider salvage costs/values. These findings clarify when retailers should use or avoid randomized discount timing.