Anne G. Balter , Cláudia Nunes , Diogo Pereira , Peter M. Kort
{"title":"Innovation and product positioning: When to add or replace","authors":"Anne G. Balter , Cláudia Nunes , Diogo Pereira , Peter M. Kort","doi":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103327","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103327","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We consider a monopolist firm, currently active in the market, which has the opportunity to innovate by introducing a new product. This involves decisions about the timing, quality, and positioning relative to the established product. To study this problem, we use the Hotelling line model. Moreover, we introduce demand uncertainty. The main result is that when the established product is sufficiently profitable, it will be replaced by the new product in the long run. This result is reinforced by demand uncertainty, which delays the new product introduction. Adding the new product alongside the established product so that they are both available for sale after the new product is introduced, may occur when the unit production cost of the new product is small. In the latter scenario, a hysteresis region may arise where the firm waits, while at lower demand levels, it immediately adds the new product alongside the established product, and at higher demand levels it immediately replaces the established product with the new one.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19529,"journal":{"name":"Omega-international Journal of Management Science","volume":"136 ","pages":"Article 103327"},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2025-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143834609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Collaborative collective action in sustainability initiatives","authors":"Jen-Yi Chen , Moonwon Chung , Chien-Hui Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103337","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103337","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Sustainability is important but costly for most companies. This paper explores the collective action problem facing competing brands regarding whether to collaborate (co-opetition) in sustainability initiatives. We develop a game-theoretic framework to study co-opetition by considering their market sizes, consumer segments, and loyalties, as well as the change in profit margin and investment costs when participating. We characterize the circumstances where collaborative collective action may take place, which is mainly driven by the large brand. However, when one brand becomes too large, the possibility of collaboration vanishes. A prisoner’s dilemma (collective inaction) and multi-equilibrium outcomes may arise, though some may be circumvented or intervened to attain the desired co-opetition outcome for the social good. The non-monotone reactions of the profits to various market factors imply that both the direct effect of the parameters and, more importantly, the indirect effect of the rival’s strategy should be taken as a whole when contemplating one brand’s best response to market changes. In our generalized multiple-brand extension, we find that a new type of multi-equilibrium outcome may occur but more importantly, full collaboration among a large number of competitors is unlikely to happen without interventions. Furthermore, when incorporating pricing power, we find that a higher price premium enhances the larger brand’s incentive to adopt sustainability, reduces the likelihood of collective inaction, and increases the prevalence of asymmetric equilibria where only one brand participates.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19529,"journal":{"name":"Omega-international Journal of Management Science","volume":"136 ","pages":"Article 103337"},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2025-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143839707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inventory management with leading indicator augmented hierarchical forecasts","authors":"Yves R. Sagaert , Nikolaos Kourentzes","doi":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103335","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103335","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Inventory management relies on accurate demand forecasts. Typically, these are univariate forecasts extrapolating patterns from past demand. The disaggregate nature of demand at the Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) level makes the incorporation of external information challenging. Nonetheless, such leading information can be critical to identifying disruptions and changes in the demand dynamics. To address the inventory planning needs of a global manufacturer we propose a methodology that identifies predictively useful leading indicators at an aggregate demand level, and translates that information to SKU-demand by leveraging on the hierarchical structure of the problem. Therefore, the proposed methodology provides probabilistic forecasts enriched by leading indicator information at SKU-level, as inputs for inventory management. The methodology automatically adjusts the choice of indicators for different required lead times, with some being more informative about the short-term demand dynamics and others for the long-term. We demonstrate the benefits both in the case of backorders and lost-sales, for a variety of lead times. We further benchmark the solution against solely using leading indicators or hierarchical forecasts, demonstrating that the benefits appear primarily by the proposed blending of the modelling approaches. The outcome is demonstratively better forecasts and inventory management for the case company. Additionally, management gains insights into the main drivers of their short and long-term demand, and the ability to adjust inventory replenishment accordingly. The ability to account for diverse macro and market information in operations is paramount for firms with a global reach that face different market conditions across countries. Additionally, the transparency of which leading indicators are influencing forecasts of different lead times is conducive to increased forecast trustworthiness.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19529,"journal":{"name":"Omega-international Journal of Management Science","volume":"136 ","pages":"Article 103335"},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2025-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143859386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gonzalo Méndez-Vogel , Vladimir Marianov , Armin Lüer-Villagra
{"title":"Combining state-of-the-art row generation methods for the competitive facility location problem with multinomial logit choice rule","authors":"Gonzalo Méndez-Vogel , Vladimir Marianov , Armin Lüer-Villagra","doi":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103339","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103339","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The competitive facility location problem, in which customers are assumed to use the multinomial logit rule to choose where to purchase, has gained increasing attention in the location field. In 2014, a comparison between the most successful exact solution methods at that time was published. These were based on the linearization of the logit formula. In the ten years following that comparison, important advancements have been made in finding exact solutions to the problem based on row generation methods. Different types of cuts have been proposed together with two approaches of using them. We introduce the three articles that represent the state-of-the-art, and we combine the cuts and methods presented in these articles to explore new approaches and find the best exact methods using an empirical approach to the most popular test instances. The best methods obtained have not been presented in the literature so far. We also discuss some improvement paths.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19529,"journal":{"name":"Omega-international Journal of Management Science","volume":"136 ","pages":"Article 103339"},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2025-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143828200","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"To stop or not, that is the question: When should a buyer hit the brakes for supply base rationalization?","authors":"Wen Zhang , Elena Katok","doi":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103328","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103328","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper analytically and experimentally studies the buyer’s sequential decisions in supply base rationalization during re-sourcing. Starting with a mix of qualified and potential suppliers, the buyer sequentially decides whether or not to screen another randomly selected potential supplier. Adopting the frameworks of optimal stopping problem and discrete convex analysis, we characterize structural properties and identify sufficient conditions for optimal control-limit, control-band, and one-step look-ahead policies. To investigate human decision biases, we design experiments where subjects make decisions based on the one-step look-ahead policy. Results show that compared to theoretical predictions, subjects stop with too few qualified suppliers when qualification costs are low and too many when costs are high. To explain this “too few/too many” pattern, we propose a behavioral model incorporating aversion to stopping, loss aversion, and gain-seeking biases. The structural estimation reveals that while the aversion to stopping bias exists in all treatments, the loss aversion bias only occurs in high passing probability treatments, and the gain-seeking bias in low passing probability treatments. Our findings suggest that buying companies should avoid stopping too early when the qualification passing probability is high and be cautious of betting behaviors when the probability is low.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19529,"journal":{"name":"Omega-international Journal of Management Science","volume":"136 ","pages":"Article 103328"},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2025-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143834844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inverse optimization on the evaluations of alternatives in the Promethee II ranking method","authors":"Alexandre Flachs, Yves De Smet","doi":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103325","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103325","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In multi-criteria decision aid, one usually distinguishes three main families of methods: aggregating, outranking and interactive approaches. Among the outranking methods, <span>Promethee</span> II allows decision makers to obtain a complete ranking of the alternatives regarding multiple – usually conflicting – criteria. Despite its popularity and the various theoretical contributions that have been made to it, few work has been focused on the influence of the alternatives’ evaluations on the final ranking.</div><div>In this contribution, this issue is addressed by proposing a solution to the following question: given a ranking of the alternatives, what are the minimal modifications required on the evaluations of a given alternative in order to improve its position? A novel exact algorithmic procedure is proposed to answer this question even when multiple criteria are involved. In such cases the solution takes the form of a Pareto optimal front. A proof of the correctness of the algorithm and a complexity analysis are provided. Finally, experimental tests of the method on a real life dataset is discussed along with some indications on how it could be presented to decision makers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19529,"journal":{"name":"Omega-international Journal of Management Science","volume":"136 ","pages":"Article 103325"},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143760460","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pull–push strategies under Cournot competition","authors":"Shujie Luan , Weili Xue , Lijun Ma , Tao Li","doi":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103304","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103304","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We consider one supplier that decides the production quantity to serve two manufacturers, who contract with the supplier for raw materials and sell their finished products to the same uncertain market under Cournot competition. The manufacturers can either contract with the supplier by push contract or pull contract. We first establish the supplier’s production decision, and the manufacturers’ ordering and selling decisions, given both manufacturers’ contracting strategies, i.e., push contract or pull contract. We characterize the first-mover advantage of a push contract under competition, and find that when a competitor chooses a pull contract, the manufacturer with a push contract will possibly reduce his order quantity even when the supplier reduces supply to his competitor. Then, we investigate manufacturers’ equilibrium contracting strategies, and the supplier’s contracting preference. Interestingly, we find that completely symmetric manufacturers can choose different contracting strategies even when the wholesale prices for both contracts are identical. At last, we numerically characterize how competition influences the value of pull and push contracts. From the perspective of the whole supply chain, we find that a pull contract alone cannot achieve Pareto improvement, and only a mixed contract can possibly achieve Pareto improvement for reasonable wholesale prices.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19529,"journal":{"name":"Omega-international Journal of Management Science","volume":"136 ","pages":"Article 103304"},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143815573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On order smoothing interpolating the order-up-to and constant order policies","authors":"Geng Cui , Naoto Imura , Katsuhiro Nishinari , Takahiro Ezaki","doi":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103326","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103326","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We investigate order smoothing by interpolating two well-known inventory replenishment policies: the order-up-to policy and the constant order policy, as a means to improve supply chain performance. Order smoothing mitigates the bullwhip effect, reducing the risk of order fluctuations and inventory fluctuations for upstream supply chain echelons. Based on a two-echelon supply chain model, we explore the conditions under which order smoothing becomes desirable compared to situations without order smoothing, focusing on customer demand characteristics and smoothing strength. Our analysis examines both sinusoidal and stochastic responses to provide two distinct yet interrelated perspectives: amplitude in the frequency domain and the time domain. We highlight the significant impact of auto-correlated demand processes, which are prevalent in practice and relevant literature, on the economic benefits of order smoothing. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our proposed policy is an extension of the well-studied proportional order-up-to policy and can outperform it in certain scenarios.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19529,"journal":{"name":"Omega-international Journal of Management Science","volume":"136 ","pages":"Article 103326"},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143760461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An integrated column generation solution framework for optimal aircrew vacation planning subject to seniority ranking and priority preference satisfaction","authors":"George Kozanidis","doi":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103324","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103324","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We consider the vacation planning problem in the context of commercial aviation, which aims to devise optimal vacation periods for a group of crew members, while also ensuring that the efficient operation of the airline remains intact. The problem definition includes two objectives treated lexicographically, the maximization of crew satisfaction with respect to specific vacation preferences (bids) they have expressed in advance, and the minimization of the collective vacation entitlement that remains unassigned. We develop an integrated solution framework for this problem, which consists of two independent phases executed sequentially. The first one (<em>bid award phase</em>) focuses exclusively on crew satisfaction, exploiting an innovative optimization model that examines the approval of each bid individually, according to the distribution logic in effect. Each grant/reject decision is made based on whether bid acceptance retains the feasibility of this model. The second one (<em>auto-allocation phase</em>) employs a column generation solution algorithm which assigns complementary vacation periods to the crew members for maximizing the total number of vacation days assigned combinedly to the group. We report computational results on realistic problem instances with variable characteristics, which demonstrate the behavior of the proposed solution methodology, assess its computational performance, and highlight its effectiveness. These results confirm that it succeeds in identifying robust solutions accommodating the highly variable user requirements of practical airline environments in satisfactory computational times.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19529,"journal":{"name":"Omega-international Journal of Management Science","volume":"135 ","pages":"Article 103324"},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143706263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sparse facility location and network design problems","authors":"Gao-Xi Li , Yi Ren , Peiru Yi","doi":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103319","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.omega.2025.103319","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>To further minimize the number of facilities even if it entails additional costs, policymakers often have this preference during facility location decisions. To cater to this preference, we introduce a sparsity-inducing term in this paper. This term generates sparse solutions for both the facility location model and the facility network design model, leading to the proposal of a sparse facility location model and a sparse facility network design model. These two sparse models are formulated as nonlinear mixed-integer programs, featuring objective functions that are non-Lipschitz continuous concerning continuous variables, making them highly challenging to solve. Consequently, we propose a continuous relaxation approach that converts these sparse discrete models into continuous nonlinear programs. We validate the efficacy of both the sparse discrete models and the relaxation method through two classic case studies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19529,"journal":{"name":"Omega-international Journal of Management Science","volume":"136 ","pages":"Article 103319"},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143739362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}