Endogenous quality enhancement with behavior-based pricing

Distinguished Research Seminar Series

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Date

15 Apr 2026
Organiser

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, PolyU
Time

15:00 - 16:30
Venue

Online via ZOOM

Speaker

Prof. Guo Li

Remarks

Meeting link will be sent to successful registrants.. If you have enquiries regarding E-certificate after the seminar, please contact david.kuo@polyu.edu.hk.

Summary

With the advances in information technologies, firms are able to identify their new and old consumers, thereby implementing behavior-based pricing (BBP) to compete for these two consumer segments against competitors. In addition to BBP, quality enhancement is also widely recognized as an effective tool for gaining consumer favor in the competitive environment. Although these two strategies seem to have analogous or overlapping purposes, evidence indicates that numerous firms still adopt both, even at the expense of additional cost (i.e., the cost of quality enhancement). The underlying mechanism remains unclear in both theory and practice. To fill this gap, we establish a two-period analytical model consisting of two quality-differentiated firms (a high-quality (HQ) firm and a low-quality (LQ) firm), and explore the trade-off between quality enhancement and BBP. We derive some interesting results, which have useful managerial and regulatory implications.

Keynote Speaker

Prof. Guo Li

Professor
School of Management, Beijing Institute of Technology, China

Guo Li is a professor of Operations Management at the School of Management, Beijing Institute of Technology, China. He was awarded “Cheung Kong Scholar Chair Professor” in 2024. His research interests include data driven decision analytics, supply chain management, and AI driven operation management. He has authored/edited several research handbooks and published over 80 papers in peer-refereed academic journals, such as Management Science, Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, Decision Sciences, Naval Research Logistics, European Journal of Operational Research, etc. He has been featured in the Highly Cited Chinese Researchers list published by Elsevier (2022-2025) and the World’s Top 2% Scientists list published by Stanford University. He received the 2023 “Ambassador Award” in Journal of Operations Management and the Award of the China’s 100 Most Influential International Academic Papers in 2020, the 2021 IFORS-ITOR-Wiley Best Paper Award, the Top 10 Most Downloaded Article and Top Cited Article 2021-2022 in Production and Operations Management, and the Best Paper Award in Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, etc.