Keywords. Hub-to-hub network, bid-price control, certainty equivalent control, combinatorial optimization, structures, primal-dual, revenue management, airline network, monotone thresholds, supermodularity/submodularity, L♮ concavity, Lagrange dual. / The subject of this study is the revenue management problem in hub-to-hub airline networks. The network consists of two hubs and a connecting flight between them with spoke cities expanding outwards. The airline produces various itineraries within the network, and its flights compete with each other for limited flight capacities during a fixed booking period. Although stochastic dynamic network revenue management has been theoretically established, in reality its implementation is still heavily dependent on linear programming-based heuristics. Simpson (1989) and Williamson (1992) proposed bid price control, which is now widely adopted by major airlines. Bertsimas and de Boer (2003) proposed certainty equivalent control, which has been little studied by RM researchers. In this thesis, bid price control is first explained, and then the structural properties of the hub-to-hub network are investigated. Using the Lagrange dual-function and the primal-dual relationship, it is shown that the threshold values used in bid price control have some monotone properties in the network's capacity states. The certainty equivalent control is then applied to the hub-to-hub network. By linking the network revenue management problem with a maximum-weight circulation problem in network flow, the optimal value function is shown to be supermodular in certain capacity dimensions, and submodular in other dimensions. This leads to the monotonicity of CEC thresholds on some short-haul itineraries. The notion of L ♮ concavity developed by Murota and Shioura (2005) is applied to this work, and it is shown that even the CEC thresholds on some two-leg or three-leg long-haul itineraries are monotonically increasing or decreasing in certain legs' capacities. It is hoped that the new structural properties found in this thesis can lead to a reduction of the computational work in the implementation of both the bid price control and the certainty equivalent control in the hub-to-hub airline network. / He, Hongzhi. / Adviser: Zhang Shuzhong. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 72-04, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-118). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

The efficiency of revenue management relies on the effectiveness of the strategies it employs. In the competing market nowadays, time has become an important concern at both demand and supply sides. With time-sensitive customers and additional benefits from intertemporal demand shift, we find that the sellers could turn to a time-differentiation based strategy as an effective revenue management tool. Motivated by real-life business issues of Toyota China dealerships, in this thesis, we consider stylized inventory-control models with delivery upgrades, in which the seller allocates its on-hand inventory to price and delivery-time sensitive customers. The seller provides two delivery-time options with different prices. Customers choose the proper purchasing option according to their heterogeneous preferences. The seller has two decisions: inventory commitment and inventory replenishment. The former addresses, within an inventory cycle, how on-hand inventories are allocated between the two classes of customers. The latter addresses, between inventory cycles, how the inventory is replenished. Furthermore, the seller may employ early delivery, namely upgrade, to achieve a higher inventory flexibility. We develop the optimal inventory allocation and upgrade, and inventory replenishment policies, and demonstrate that the optimal control can be characterized by a switching curve. Based on the basic model setting, we extend our analysis to include cases of upgrade cost, stock-out substitution, and capacity constraint. We further discuss the joint pricing and inventory decision. We obtain the form of the optimal joint policy, and show that the two strategies may well complement each other in our setting. When each is applied separately, their performances are also compared. To shed more light on the practical side, finally, we use the Toyota dealership data to calibrate the required parameters, and demonstrate the potential of the optimal inventory allocation and upgrade control. / Liang, Xiaoying. / Advisers: Houmin Yan; Youhua Chen. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 72-04, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 118-124). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

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