Improving food quality consistency of chain restaurants with central kitchen

Pricing and quality strategies for an on-demand housekeeping platform with customer-intensive services

Given the importance of determining the traffic level in celebrity endorsement management and prominent impacts from strategic consumers, this paper utilizes mathematical modelling to study the optimal traffic level and pricing strategy as well as relevant influencing factors in the context of celebrity endorsement. The results show that optimal traffic level is highest under uniform high pricing strategy and lowest under uniform low pricing strategy, with that of dynamic pricing strategy lying in between. Aside from the proportion of strategic consumers, optimal pricing strategy is also determined by the joint effects of celebrity endorsement characteristics, such as the premium effect of celebrity endorsement, the market demand expansion effect, and the traffic using cost. It depends on the tradeoff between the positive effects (premium effect and market demand expansion effect) and the negative effects (endorsement fee of unit traffic) of the celebrity endorsement.

With the economic development and social progress, the modern catering industry represented by chain operation is gradually moving towards industrialization, chain operation, and modernization. The chain restaurant industry relies more on professional and efficient cold chain supply chain design and services. The cold chain supply chain system includes a distribution center based on the central kitchen, specialized third-party logistics based on its own or outsourced cold chain logistics, and food taste quality research and development represented by new technologies.

The existence of a pure-strategy subgame perfect equilibrium in qualities and prices is investigated in a duopoly model of vertical differentiation where quality improvements require a quadratic variable cost. The alternative cases of partial and full market coverage are considered. It is shown that there exists a parameter range where the

Central Kitchen is a new trend in the food and beverage industry. COVID-19 pandemic causes a disruptive economy globally. The central kitchen business is being considered to be developed because of the restriction living regulation in Indonesia and the function of this central kitchen can help the micro-business actors to develop their businesses with a lower operational cost because all of the transactions are carried out via delivery. This study aims to visualize the potential areas to develop central kitchen businesses in Jabodetabek. A GIS-based approach is implemented to carry out the geoprocessing process of spatial information to performs the spatial analysis.Overlay analysis is conducted using Kernel Density Estimation map, to identify potential areas. This study identified several potential areasin several cities to develop central kitchen businesses, namelyCentral Jakarta, West Jakarta, South Jakarta, Tangerang City, Bekasi, and Bogor.

Since the School Lunch Law was enacted in 1954, the school lunch program in Japan has seen rapid development, mainly in compulsory schools. Eighty-four percent of all pupils in compulsory schools are fed lunch, and nearly half of the meals are provided by the central kitchen system. There has been much criticism of the central kitchen system concerning the quality of the meals. Recently, it has been demonstrated that many cooks suffer from musculo-skeletal symptoms in their necks, shoulders, arms and lower backs. This paper discusses the relationship between the cooking work load and health hazards by comparing the tasks of cooks in the central kitchen system with those of cooks in individual school kitchens. All the female cooks in one prefecture were queried by a mail survey method. The respondents totalled 1,428 (response rate 68%). Of this number, 186 work in 15 central kitchens (group C) and the other 1,242 work in 401 school kitchens (group S). In addition physical examinations were carried out on cooks who registered serious complaints in the questionnaires and on those who wanted to undergo the examination. The results are as follows: The work load in the central kitchens is greater than that in the school kitchens. Both groups C and S complained of cervicobrachial symptoms and low-back pain as frequently as other workers already reported to be in a high risk of these hazards. Group C suffer from these hazards more frequently and seriously than group S. Group C assigned "carrying heavy objects" as a cause of low-back pain and cervicobrachial symptoms more frequently than group S. This was related to the difference in numbers of meals served by groups C and S. As a result of the physical examination, serious cases of cervicobrachial disorders and/or low-back pain were found more frequently among cooks who had serious complaints than among other examinees. It was concluded that these results demonstrated a positive relationship between the cooking work load and the development of health hazards. Therefore, if we wish to protect cooks from these hazards, it is not advisable to maintain the current central kitchen system.

Online social networks provide a platform for customers to share their experience and make viral marketing possible. Through online social networks, sellers can apply marketing strategies to reach more potential buyers and thus gain more revenue. Previous studies on social network marketing based on the influence maximization problem focus on how to propagate information widely and neglect that price is a key factor that influences information diffusion. In this paper, we study the problem of how to design pricing strategies in order to maximize the revenue when the product usage or promotion time is limited. Different from the existing study of optimal pricing scheme over online social networks, we consider how the price may influence the diffusion. In addition, with limited promotion time, the prices assigned in the different promotion stages of the pricing sequence can be increasing. To better understand the problem, we propose a framework which incorporates the influence maximization problem and a multi-state diffusion model. In the diffusion model, users are divided into different groups by their purchasing behavior and have different influence power, which informs how pricing strategies can influence the potential buyers. We design several pricing strategies under our framework with different pricing sequence order and different promotion time. Simulations are performed to illustrate the concepts in our framework and compare different pricing strategies. With our framework, we can provide some guidelines for the seller when designing the pricing strategy.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a framework to help competitive firms find optimal pricing and brand management strategies in order to maximize their respective profits.Design/methodology/approachA game‐theoretic model is developed to determine optimal pricing and brand management strategies for competitive firms.FindingsThe study demonstrates that optimal pricing and brand management strategies exist for firms in a competitive market. The optimum marketing strategy for competitive firms to employ is the cooperative alliance pricing and brand management strategy, particularly when market competition is very intense.Research limitations/implicationsThe present study assumes that all information is known to all parties. However, information could be incomplete. It is recommended that future research explore pricing and brand management strategies under incomplete and asymmetric information settings.Practical implicationsThe paper provides a very useful model framework and pricing and brand management strategy for business managers when they are doing business in a competitive market.Originality/valueThe paper fills a conceptual and practical gap for a structured analysis of the current state of knowledge about alliance brand. It provides practical and solid advice and examples demonstrating the application of cooperative alliance pricing and brand management strategies for business managers.

We revisit Maxwell's (1998) analysis to show that MQS regulation has no effects on the high-quality firm's incentive to adopt a more efficient technology in a vertically differentiated duopoly with fixed costs of quality improvement and full market coverage.

The choice of the roles by firms in a vertically differenitated duopoly is analysed introducing a preplay stage where firms set the timing of moves, under the alternative assumptions of full or non full market coverage. Under the first, it turns out that the unique subgame perfect equilibrium entails simultaneous play in the quality stage, followed by sequential play in the price stage, where both firms would prefer to be price leader, contrarily to the results obtained by previous literature. Under partial market coverage, it is possible to analyse both price and quantity competition. In such a case, simultaneous play in both stages emerges as the optimal behaviour. Overall, contrarily to the conclusions reached by the previous literature, it is not possible to claim that the choice of the strategy space dominates the distribution of roles.

SummaryAn inductive procedure is adopted to evaluate the behaviour of a multiproduct profit seeking monopolist vis à vis that of a social planner, in a model where there is a continuum of consumers characterized by different marginal willingness to pay for quality. When the market is completely covered, the monopolist undersupplies all qualities as long as their number is finite. When quality becomes continuous, the richest consumer is provided with the socially optimal quality. Under the alternative assumption of partial market coverage, the monopolist supplies the same qualities as the social planner, restricting though total output. Finally, it turns out that, for a given number of varieties, under partial market coverage the monopolist can make at least as good as under full market coverage, so that she prefers to distort quantity rather than quality.

The behaviour of a multiproduct profit seeking monopolist is evaluated vis a vis that of a social planner, in a model where there is a continuum of consumers characterized by different marginal willingness to pay for quality. When the market is completely covered, the monopolist undersupplies all qualities as long as their number is finite. When quality becomes continuous, the richest consumer is provided with the socially optimal quality. Under the alternative assumption of partial market coverage, the monopolist supplies the same qualities as the social planner, restricting though total output. Finally, it turns out that, for a given number of varieties, under partial market coverage the monopolist can make at least as good as under full market coverage, so that she prefers to distort quantity rather than quality.

The consequences of the adoption of quality standards on the extent of market coverage is investigated by modelling a game between regulator and low-quality firm in a vertically differentiated duopoly. The game has a unique equilibrium in the most part of the parameter range. There exists a non-negligible range where the game has no equilibrium in pure strategies. This result questions the feasibility of MQS regulation when firms endogenously determine market coverage.

We consider the item pricing problem for revenue maximization, where a single seller with multiple distinct items caters to multiple buyers with unknown subadditive valuation functions who arrive in a sequence. The seller sets the prices on individual items, and we design randomized pricing strategies to maximize expected revenue. We consider dynamic uniform strategies, which can change the price upon the arrival of each buyer but the price on all unsold items is the same at all times, and static nonuniform strategies, which can assign different prices to different items but can never change it after setting it initially. We design pricing strategies that guarantee poly-logarithmic (in number of items) approximation to maximum possible social welfare, which is an upper bound on revenue. We also show that any static uniform pricing strategy cannot yield such approximation, thus highlighting a large gap between the powers of dynamic and static pricing. Finally, our pricing strategies imply poly-logarithmic approximation for revenue-optimal incentive compatible mechanisms, in multiparameter combinatorial auctions with subaddititve buyer valuations, which is the best known guarantee given by efficient mechanisms for both prior-free and Bayesian settings.

Based on the consumer speculative purchase problem in the full-reduction promotion scenario, considering the heterogeneity of strategic consumers’ valuation of the initial purchase intention commodity and the add-on item, as well as the possibility that consumers may be dissatisfied with the add-on items after receiving the goods, a single-period pricing decision model is constructed, and the optimal pricing strategies of the platform provider are obtained in the two cases of disallowing the return of the goods and providing a money-back guarantee, respectively. It is found that optimal original pricing exists for both commodities in both models making the platform provider most profitable. Furthermore, since the promotional discount rate is an exogenous variable, the optimal promotional price for the combination of the two commodities is obtained. It was also found that increasing the degree of relatedness of the two commodities and consumer satisfaction with the add-on items can effectively stifle speculative purchasing behavior. By comprehensively comparing the optimal profits of platform providers in the two cases, we find that neither model is absolutely dominant and gives the critical conditions for platform providers to choose different return strategies. Finally, the influence of relevant parameters on the optimal pricing strategy and profit of the platform provider under the two models is analyzed through numerical examples, which provides a reference for the platform provider to formulate the optimal strategy according to their own situation. Finally, the influence of relevant parameters on the optimal pricing strategy and profit of the platform provider is analyzed through specific data, which provides a reference for the platform provider to determine the optimal pricing and return strategy according to the operating conditions.