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Author:

Cao, Zhigang (Cao, Zhigang.) | Chen, Xujin (Chen, Xujin.) | Hu, Xiaodong (Hu, Xiaodong.) | Wang, Changjun (Wang, Changjun.)

Indexed by:

SSCI Scopus SCIE

Abstract:

We study the problems of pricing an indivisible product to consumers who are embedded in a given social network. The goal is to maximize the revenue of the seller by the so-called iterative pricing that offers consumers a sequence of prices over time. The consumers are assumed to be impatient in that they buy the product as soon as the seller posts a price not greater than their valuations of the product. The product's value for a consumer is determined by two factors: a fixed consumer-specified intrinsic value and a variable externality that is exerted from the consumer's neighbors in a linear way. We focus on the scenario of negative externalities, which captures many interesting situations, but is much less understood in comparison with its positive externality counterpart. Assuming complete information about the network, consumers' intrinsic values, and the negative externalities, we prove that it is NP-hard to find an optimal iterative pricing, even for unweighted tree networks with uniform intrinsic values. Complementary to the hardness result, we design a 2-approximation algorithm for general weighted networks with (possibly) nonuniform intrinsic values. We show that, as an approximation to optimal iterative pricing, single pricing works fairly well for many interesting cases, such as forests, ErdAs-R,nyi networks and Barabasi-Albert networks, although its worst-case performance can be arbitrarily bad in general networks.

Keyword:

Pricing Random networks Social networks Negative externalities Approximation algorithms NP-hardness

Author Community:

  • [ 1 ] [Cao, Zhigang]Chinese Acad Sci, Acad Math & Syst Sci, Beijing 100190, Peoples R China
  • [ 2 ] [Chen, Xujin]Chinese Acad Sci, Acad Math & Syst Sci, Beijing 100190, Peoples R China
  • [ 3 ] [Hu, Xiaodong]Chinese Acad Sci, Acad Math & Syst Sci, Beijing 100190, Peoples R China
  • [ 4 ] [Wang, Changjun]Beijing Univ Technol, Beijing Inst Sci & Engn Comp, Beijing 100124, Peoples R China

Reprint Author's Address:

  • [Wang, Changjun]Beijing Univ Technol, Beijing Inst Sci & Engn Comp, Beijing 100124, Peoples R China

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Source :

JOURNAL OF COMBINATORIAL OPTIMIZATION

ISSN: 1382-6905

Year: 2017

Issue: 2

Volume: 33

Page: 681-712

1 . 0 0 0

JCR@2022

ESI Discipline: MATHEMATICS;

ESI HC Threshold:66

CAS Journal Grade:3

Cited Count:

WoS CC Cited Count: 9

SCOPUS Cited Count: 10

ESI Highly Cited Papers on the List: 0 Unfold All

WanFang Cited Count:

Chinese Cited Count:

30 Days PV: 7

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