Refund Rate Research Articles

A signaling theory of reservation cancellation policies

We examine the signaling effect of a hotel’s reservation cancellation policy. We find separating equilibria in which the refund rate indicates high quality. Consumers may cancel their hotel reservations due to unforeseen events. We examine two cases: one in which an unforeseen event may reduce the reservation holder’s valuation to zero if consumers have no other purpose and the other in which the valuation decreases but can be used for an alternative purpose. We show that a low refund rate for cancellations indicates high quality in the former case because a given refund rate is costlier for a high-quality hotel due to its larger volume of reservations. In the latter case, we show that a high refund rate can signal high quality because a given refund rate is less expensive for a high-quality hotel because of its lower cancellation rate.

Optimal Taxation of Informal Firms: Misreporting Costs and a Tax Reform in Brazil

Abstract This paper investigates multistage taxes on firms in a limited tax capacity economy. We characterize the optimal taxation of informal firms reinterpreting behavioral and mechanical effects. Our numerical exercises highlight the relationship between misreporting costs and the elasticities of reported revenues and costs. We explore a tax reform in Brazil with a survey of informal firms to estimate these elasticities (0.55 and 0.94, respectively), which imply smaller sheltering costs for input expenditures. The optimal multistage tax system includes (i) differential linear taxes across the production chain and (ii) a positive, but very small, tax refund rate.

321 Transfer of Care to a Clinical Nurse Specialist Pathway for Patients Undergoing Exogen Therapy Improves Outcomes, Compliance, and Refund Rate

Abstract Aim Exogen (low-intensity pulsed ultrasound) has been shown to improve union rates following delayed/non-union. It is accompanied by a money-back guarantee in unsuccessful cases, dependent on adequate patient compliance. Using a clinician-run pathway, our unit’s results were poor, so our aim was to create a clinical nurse specialist (CNS) pathway with protocols for recording outcomes, collecting data, and claiming refunds for unsuccessful cases. Method This was a single-centre, retrospective, multi-cycle audit performed over 60 months on patients undergoing Exogen treatment for delayed/non-union following elective foot and ankle arthrodesis. Data was collected on union rates, Exogen compliance, and refund collections. Results were compared (Chi-squared test) for the original cohort (n = 55) and the CNS-led cohort (n = 18). Results In the original cohort, 24 patients (43.6%) united (mean time 225 ±145 days). Only 14 (25.5%) had treatment compliance accurately recorded and compliance rate >95%. Of 31 patients whose Exogen treatment failed, only 7 (22.6%) were eligible for a treatment cost refund due to lack of compliance / record of compliance. In the CNS-led cohort, 12 (66.7%) patients united (mean time 190 ±77 days, p = 0.089). Sixteen patients (88.9%) had compliance accurately recorded (p<0.001), with increased compliance rates (>99%). Exogen treatment costs were refunded for 5 patients (83.3%) with residual non-union (p = 0.004). Conclusions Transferring patient care to a dedicated CNS-run pathway led to a non-statistically significant increase in union rates, and significantly improved compliance and fiscal return rates. Establishing dedicated protocols with paramedical staff can be cost-effective and improve outcomes, whilst reducing out-patient burden in surgical clinics.

Analysis of Space-time Characteristics of Urban Residents' Travel in Chongqing with Customized Passenger Transport

Intercity customized passenger transport as a new travel mode has been widely accepted by the road passenger transport industry and enterprises. Under the guidance and support of national policies, passenger transport enterprises all over the country are actively exploring the business practice of inter-city customized passenger transport, which is booming. In this context, this paper uses python and other analysis software to collect the 2021 operation data of Chongqing Yukexing Company and analyze the distribution of gender, age, and refund rate of customized passenger transport of Chongqing residents throughout the year. In addition, the time and space characteristics of customized passenger transport are explored. And then provide data support for relevant enterprises to provide relevant management innovation programs.

The product marketing model of the economic zone by the sensor big data mining algorithm

Since the reform and opening up, China's market economy has gradually prospered, and the development of various industries and their products has become a key research issue of the government. In the context of big data, this article believes that future industrial development should be driven by big data. At the same time, the advent of the era of big data will surely bring about changes in the marketing model of products in the economic zone. This article puts forward the research on product marketing model based on big data mining algorithm, the purpose is to do a detailed investigation of the core algorithm of data mining, in order to improve the marketing efficiency of enterprises and reduce the investment and loss of marketing. The method of this paper is to study the Hadoop parallel framework and the K-Means algorithm in the mining algorithm to collaboratively filter the big data mining algorithm, and integrate these algorithms into the marketing process. These methods can recommend products to target users based on their previous interests and other users who have similar interests. Finally, this article sorts the web pages according to the PageRank value of each node in order to achieve the purpose of accurately recommending products to customers. Through the K-means algorithm mining data experiment and financial product marketing examples, this article puts forward some suggestions and measures for the marketing model. The experimental results show that the customer response rate of precision marketing is 11.92 % higher than that of ordinary marketing, and the sales efficiency of marketers has improved significantly. In addition, precision marketing is better than ordinary marketing in many aspects such as the proportion of large orders, average consumption price, and refund rate.

Impacts of tax refund on enterprise’s decisions on recycled materials production: A cross-regional perspective

Recently along with the development of waste recycling markets, a distinct management scenario which extends the traditional municipality-level management scenario to a cross-regional management scenario emerges. Under the cross-regional management scenario, on the one hand, disparities in value-added tax refund policy aggravate imbalanced development of construction and demolition waste recycling markets between regions. On the other hand, how preferential taxation policies would influence decisions of waste recycling enterprises are unclear. To fill the research gap, this paper investigates impacts of value-added tax refund policies on enterprise’s cross-regional recycling decisions by establishing game models that involve two recycling enterprises and two transportation enterprises. Through developing and analyzing game theory based models, the optimal decisions of involved enterprises are obtained. The findings reveal that (i) when the disparities in transportation costs and market capacities between two regions are moderate, recycling enterprises should choose cross-regional production rather than local production; (ii) enlarging market capacities after cross-regional recycling could simultaneously increase recycling quantities of waste in original region. But moderate market capacities and high value-added tax refund rate promote both recycling enterprises being better off in cross-regional production scenario; and (iii) raising value-added tax refund rate is not always necessary under certain conditions, where higher value-added tax refund rate reversely decrease recycling enterprise profits in current region. To enhance the effectiveness of value-added tax refund policy, reducing cross-regional transportation costs and balancing regional market capacities should be applied by the local government. The findings are valuable in expanding the research scope of traditional construction and demolition waste recycling markets and increasing the efficiency of applying tax policies in promoting waste recycling. There are two research limitations; one is that we did not consider the illegal waste dumping (i.e., dumping waste into unauthorized areas) frequently occurring in the process of waste transportation, and the other is that we considered unified preferential taxation for both of the recycling enterprises.

A Multi-Objective Model for Inventory Management of the Integrated Multi-Product Supply Chain Considering Central Warehouse and Potential Demand

In this research, an inventory management model is developed by the seller for a three-echelon supply chain, which also includes a central warehouse, along with order constraints. In this method, the seller monitors the level of inventory of the retailer so that it determines the time and amount of products for the seller and the retailer and reduces the inventory costs for the seller and the retailer. Sales inventory management in the supply chain has an integrated approach to planning and controlling materials and information in the production and distribution chain, transportation, warehouses and customers. One of the objectives of the proposed mathematical model is to determine the inventory of retailers, vendors, central warehouse and the optimal refund rate for the seller and central warehouse, which ultimately leads to a reduction in the cost of the entire system. In this study, after presenting a three-objective mathematical model to study the three-level supply chain by considering several retailers and multiple vendors and the central warehouse, the model is solved using GAMS software by the Epsilon constraint method and to test. The validation of the proposed model is examined by providing an example of the proposed model.

TireNet: A high recall rate method for practical application of tire defect type classification

Tire enterprises often use X-ray photographs to inspect tire defects, which is still in the stage of manual inspection. Existing methods have achieved a lot of success in tire defect detection, but have not yet reached the application level requirements. It is hard for unsupervised methods to handle the complex specs and patterns of tires, while the supervised methods suffered from a lack of enough data. In this paper, an end-to-end method (TireNet) is proposed for the practical application of automatic tire defect detection with X-ray images. Object detection models are introduced as the baselines, it is found that the recall rate (missed detection rate) cannot meet the application-level needs of enterprises, since tire defects are quite different from general objects. Inspired by the features of tire X-ray images, which are periodic, the Siamese network is used in the new model as part of the downstream classifier to capture the defective features. Additionally, 120,000 labeled tire images (including qualified tires) were set up and collected as datasets. The experimental results of this method reach a higher recall rate compared to Faster R-CNN, SSD, and YOLO in the labeled datasets. At present, the model has been successfully deployed to the quality inspection department of enterprises and partly replaced artificial jobs. The application results show that the missing rate of TireNet is 0.17%, which is lower than that of the artificial 2.4%. With the help of a deployed assistant detection system, the tire defect detection rate increased by more than 100%, and the tire refund rate decreased by approximately 20%.

Hotel booking through online travel agency: Optimal Stackelberg strategies under customer-centric payment service

Facing stiff competition, online travel agencies (OTAs) are dedicating to provide customer-centric payment service in hotel online booking, which poses challenges for hotels and customers to make optimal strategies. This paper studies the optimal Stackelberg decisions and strategic interactions of a hotel and a customer in online booking through online travel agencies with customer-centric payment service. The results show that refund rate has great effect on the customer's payment decision, while transaction cost has great influence on the hotel's operational decision. When the refund rate is greater than a threshold, the customer prefers online payment. Being a leader in the Stackelberg game, the hotel can induce customers to choose the payment option with the lowest transaction cost by setting a refund rate.

Multichannel retail competition with product returns: Effects of restocking fee legislation

Abstract The Internet’s explosive growth enabled new ways to reach customers, but product returns became problematic. Today, most brick-and-mortar stores have either been integrated into or replaced by the online channel. We model the competition among sales channels and analyze its equilibrium structure. We consider two competing retailers and three sales channel configurations—brick-and-mortar, click-and-mortar and strictly online—and derive the conditions under which a Nash equilibrium exists. We rule out product returns in the brick-and-mortar channel, but online purchases can be returned (possibly subject to a restocking fee). Our model allows for repeated returns of an item and its reintroduction into the forward supply chain. We investigate the effect of restocking fees and customer’s perceived channel value on the equilibrium as well as the impact of EU legislation addressing free returns. We also analyze some extensions of the model and conduct a numerical analysis to explore whether restocking fee legislation helps or hinders online business. Our results indicate that the equilibrium structure is determined by the values of the return rate, the refund rate, and the online channel attraction. Also, it results profitable to refurbish and reintroduce returned items into the forward chain multiple times. Lastly, in the context of whether to charge or not a restocking fee and the introduction of a new EU legislation, we can conclude that retailers charging a restocking fee should put more effort in order to increase consumer’s perceived value, meaning that customers will accept a restocking fee provided they view the online purchase as having higher quality than a brick-and-mortar purchase.

Manufacturing and selling tactics for a green supply chain under a green cost sharing and a refund agreement

PurposeThis paper aims to deal with optimal pricing and production tactics for a bi-echelon green supply chain, including a producer and a vendor in presence of three various scenarios. Demand depends on a price, refund and quality where the producer controls quality and the vendor proposes a refund policy to purchasers to encourage them to order more.Design/methodology/approachIn the first scenario, the members seek to optimize their optimum decision variables under a centralized decision-making method while in the second scenario, a decentralized system is assumed where the members make a decision about variables and profits under a non-cooperative game. In the third scenario, a cost-sharing agreement is concluded between the members to provide a high-quality item to the purchasers.FindingsThe performance of the proposed model is investigated by illustrating a numerical example. A sensitivity analysis of some key parameters has been done to study the effect of the changes on the optimal values of the decision variables and profits. From sensitivity analysis, the real features are observed and mentioned in this section.Originality/valueThis research examines the behavior of partners in a green supply chain facing with a group of purchasers whose demand is the function of a price, greenery degree and refund rate. This proposed mathematical model is developed and analyzed which has an implication in supply chain model.

ANALISIS TINGKAT PELAKSANAAN KREDIT MIKRO (DANA BERGULIR) DI PERGURUAN TINGGI Study Kasus pada Mahasiswa Diploma Tiga Bisnis Kewirausahaan Universitas Gunadarma Periode 2015 - 2016

This study aims to analyze the success rate of micro credit activities or revolving funds in universities. This research method uses descriptive qualitative analysis by explaining the procedure in running micro credit activity and analyzing student ability level in running micro credit activity. The data used are primary data and secondary data by conducting interviews and financial analysis. The result of this research is that students of Diploma Three Business and Entrepreneurship in conducting micro credit activities run in accordance with the procedure which has been determined, which can be seen from the result of profit rate from micro credit activity equal to 20% and micro credit refund rate of 21% and in this activity no symptoms of experiencing bad credit or students can not return the funds that have been given as venture capital. Thus the microcredit activities that run the students can run well in running the business.

Determinants of the Successful Provision of Threshold Public Goods with Refund and Threshold Uncertainty

We simplify a threshold public goods game to a 2x2-game in order to generate an estimate for the probability of successful provision (success rate). This estimate relies on the calculation of belief bounds, i.e., points of indifference between two focal contribution strategies. Our analysis reveals the effect (or lack thereof) of core game elements on the success rate. The success rate increases with the step return (i.e., the benefit-cost ratio) and decreases with the number of players, but is unaffected by the players' endowment. Our model also demonstrates that the refund rate, referring to the percentage of contribution costs that is returned if the provision fails, has a positive effect on success rates. As an application, we estimate success rates for a randomly distributed threshold value. We examine uniform and logistic probability distributions and show that increasing threshold uncertainty is not necessarily detrimental to public good provision if the benefit-cost ratio is high.

Impact analysis of HSR fare discount strategy on HSR share in Beijing–Shanghai transportation corridor

High-speed Rail (HSR) fare discount strategy is expected as an efficient way to adjust HSR share in intercity transport market based on discounted fare and return refund. Usually, return refund decreases with the decrease in discounted fare and return refund will weaken the impacts of discounted fare on HSR share. In this paper, an integration of semi-compensatory intercity mode choice model and latent class model is employed to evaluate the impacts, while the latter represents traveler’s taste heterogeneity and the former combines the consideration choice set generation and mode choice making stages. According to the estimations for Beijing–Shanghai transportation corridor, discounted fares dominate choice results relative to return refunds, and HSR share can be adjusted slightly under the fixed ticket fare by changing return refund rate. Meanwhile, given HSR share and probability of returning tickets, the optimal HSR fare discount strategy can be found to gain more ticket sales revenues.

Towards sustainable consumption and production: Competitive pricing of modular products for green consumers

Concern for unsustainable development has peaked, and promoting and devising sustainable production and consumption is vital. Therefore, via an analytical model, we examine the impact of modularity and consumer sensitivity to sustainability on the pricing decisions of two competing firms. Consider an environmentally conscious (green) consumer who will buy one of two available, horizontally differentiated products: a modular product (M) manufactured by Firm M or a standard product (S) manufactured by Firm S. Firm M can take advantage of its modular production technology and product return policy. For such a consumer-driven demand setting, we develop a model and solve to optimality a single-stage, non-cooperative game where both firms simultaneously set their competitive prices. In addition to analytical expressions for the optimal prices and the profits for both firms, we provide structural results and numerical examples to render practical insights: The refund rate has a strong impact on profits; sensitivity of product greenness can be increased by conscientious advertising, and the reusability of modular parts encourages lower pricing and higher market share. We assert that modularity is a strong concept and practice in developing sustainable products and thereby in production, which, in turn, may enhance sustainable consumption. This study's findings have direct implications for reverse supply chain management, and firms should take these findings into account early in the product design phase.

The optimal capital structure in agricultural cooperatives under the revolving fund cycles

Due to the financial features specific to agricultural cooperatives, the paper constructs a constrained-maximizing model under the assumption that the financial objective of an agricultural cooperative is to maximize the present value of the patron after-tax total income on an infinite time horizon by choosing the dividend rate, the cash patronage refund rate, and the length of the revolving fund cycles. The model is solved numerically in a numerical illustration. In equilibrium, the optimal capital structure is derived for the agricultural cooperative. The effects of the changes in personal tax rates and discount rates are also explored.

An application of Prekopa's theorem on the logconcavity of warranty reserves in reliability engineering

The log-concavity of the expected refund rate for an item with a nonrenewing pro-rata rebate warranty policy, and of the expected total reserve to service the warranty over the item life cycle under the same policy are proved. Upper bounds of warranty reserves are derived. The results are extended to other measures for spares and repairs under other warranty policies. Applications are given to ranking items' prices and production and inventory control.

Optimization of Palm Oil Plantation Revitalization in North Sumatera Indonesia

The idea of making North Sumatera as a barometer of national oil palm industry require efforts commodities and agro-industry development of oil palm. One effort that can be done is by successful execution plantation revitalization. The plantation Revitalization is an effort to accelerate the development of smallholder plantations, through expansion and replanting by help of palm estate company as business partner and bank financed plantation revitalization fund. Business partner agreement obliged and bound to make at least the same smallholder plantation productivity with business partners, so that the refund rate to banks become larger and prosperous people as a plantation owner. Generally low productivity of smallholder plantations under normal potential caused a lot of old and damaged plants with plant material at random. The purpose of revitalizing oil palm plantations which are to increase their competitiveness through increased farm productivity. The research aims to identify potential criteria in influencing plantation productivity improvement priorities to be observed and followed up in order to improve the competitiveness of destinations and make North Sumatera barometer of national palm oil can be achieved. Research conducted with Analytical Network Process (ANP), to find the effect of dependency relationships between factors or criteria with the knowledge of the experts in order to produce an objective opinion and relevant depict the actual situation.

Analysis of Productivity Improvement in the Palm Oil Plantation Revitalization of North Sumatera using Analytic Network Process

The idea of making North Sumatera as a barometer of national palm oil industry requires commodity efforts and agro-industry development of palm oil. One effort that can be done is by successful execution plantation revitalization. The plantation Revitalization is an effort to accelerate the development of smallholder plantations, through expansion and replanting by help of palm estate company as business partner and bank financing plantation revitalization fund. Business partner agreement is obliged and bound to make at least the same smallholder estate productivity with business partners, so that the refund rate to banks become larger and prosperous people as a plantation owner. Generally, low productivity of smallholder plantations under normal potential caused a lot of old and damaged plants with plant material at random. The purpose of revitalizing palm oil plantations is to increase their competitiveness through increased farm productivity. The research aims at identifying potential criteria in influencing estate productivity improvement priorities to be observed and followed up in order to improve the competitiveness of destinations and make North Sumatera barometer of national palm oil can be achieved. Research conducted with Analytical Network Process (ANP), to find the effect of dependency relationships between factors or criteria with the knowledge of the experts in order to produce an objective opinion and relevant depict the actual situation. The results showed that the priority factors that have the biggest impact as a determinant of farm productivity enhancement, namely plant health (0.184595), the insertion of seeds (0.130569), the type of fertilizer (0.116755), the number and dose of fertilizer (0.102303), the suitability of the tool and the work material (0.072098), the type of soil (0.056612), the frequency of fertilizer (0.057095), working procedures (0.048561), weed control (0.041679), pest control (0.037839), fertilization technology (0.036218), and the fertilization of seeds (0.028203). Plant population per acre and crop homogeneity becomes a major factor that needs to be observed and followed up that effort to improve productivity to enhance competitiveness of North Sumatera and became a national barometer can be achieved

The Model of Crowdfunding to Support Small and Micro Businesses in Indonesia Through a Web-based Platform

Economy crisis that hit Indonesia in the year 1997/1998 and 2008/2009 shows that small and medium-sized businesses have proven as a self-sufficient business group that has a strong resistance. Unfortunately, these independent business groups, especially small and micro businesses that have low income are not easy to get capital or financing from the banking institutions due to lack of financial history. One of the funding solutions to small and micro businesses is microfinancing. There are some institutions in Indonesia that have already engaged in microfinancing, but none of them have maximized the use of internet technology, particularly the use of interactive and social media sites that have the ability as a catalyst and mobilizer of the mass. In this study, we would like to propose a microfinancing business model to fund micro-businesses involving donors/funders, volunteers, field partners, coaches and non-profit organizations that work together in the process of screening, supervising, and managing the use of funds. This model is adapted to the behavior of Indonesian society, raising the confidence of lenders and the transparency of partners and organizations so that funds can be distributed to the right persons, be managed in an appropriate manner so as to improve the quality of life for borrowers and to achieve the highest possibility of refund rate. This business model will be implemented through a web-based system that enables all parties involved to communicate and support each other.