Optimal Pricing and Overbooking of Reservations
研究了有限容量企业在面对随机顾客和随机估值时，如何设计预订费用、服务价格和预订上限来优化收益，发现需求与容量比例影响定价结构和是否使用预订上限。
We study the optimal design of reservations for a firm with limited capacity. The firm faces a random number of customers, each of whom has a random valuation for service. The reservation policy has two components: pricing and overbooking. For the former, the firm charges a reservation fee (at the time of reservation) and a service price (at the time of service). For the latter, the firm imposes a booking limit that caps the number of reservations it sells. Given the firm's reservation policy, customers make reservations in advance and later decide whether to show up. Denying service to reservation holders is costly. We obtain the following equilibrium results. First, when demand is small relative to capacity, the firm's pricing structure relies on reservation fees prepaid in advance, but when demand is large relative to capacity, it relies on payment received upon service. Second, when demand is low and/or predictable, the firm accepts all reservation requests, but when demand is high and/or variable, the firm uses a booking limit.