Abstract

Extended warranties have become a rich source of profits for manufacturers. In the current marketplace, two-dimensional extended warranties are often sold to all customers with a fixed coverage region and the same price. However, customers are heterogeneous, as they have different use rates and failure history, which significantly affects the cost of the extended warranty. In this study, we first propose a customized extended warranty strategy that takes into account the use rate of the customer. Under the strategy, we develop a warranty cost model to compute the expected repair cost and the expected profit of the manufacturer, based on which the optimal price for the customized extended warranty can be determined. Building upon this model, we further propose a policy that makes use of both the customer’s use rate and the product’s failure history. We conduct a comprehensive numerical study to compare the two proposed policies with the prevailing fixed-region strategy. The results reveal that the customized policies are better than the prevailing policy in terms of fairness, flexibility, and profitability.

摘要

延长保修已成为制造商丰富的利润来源。在当前市场中，二维扩展保修通常以固定的覆盖区域和相同的价格出售给所有客户。但是，客户是异类的，因为他们具有不同的使用率和故障历史记录，这极大地影响了扩展保修的成本。在这项研究中，我们首先提出了一个定制的扩展保修策略，该策略考虑了客户的使用率。根据该策略，我们开发了一个保修成本模型，以计算制造商的预期维修成本和预期利润，从而可以确定定制的扩展保修的最佳价格。在此模型的基础上，我们进一步提出了同时利用客户使用率和产品故障历史记录的策略。我们进行了全面的数值研究，以比较两种拟议的政策与现行的固定区域战略。结果表明，定制策略在公平性，灵活性和盈利能力方面都优于现行策略。