Research Of Competitive Strategy For On-Line Leasing Of Durable Equipment

In the process of operation, in order to obtain the special device to meet the production requirement, the enterprise can either lease it or buy it. But if choose keep leasing strategy, when need to use the equipment for a long time, the leasing fee is more than the purchase fee. If choose buy the equipment at the beginning, the enterprise will take a greater loss when suddenly no longer need to use the equipment due to technology improvement or other reasons. And because of the fierce market competition and rapid technology updates, the decision maker have to make a choice about lease or buy and when to buy without knowing how long need to use the equipment, we call it on-line rental problem. The research about on-line rental problem is start with the "ski-rental" model of Karp, on the basis of this model, many scholars make a thorough research about the on-line rental problem. But the existing studies assume that the value of the assets is not reversible, it means that the equipment become worthless when no longer need to use it. But in the actual financial leasing, the object is always valuable and durable equipment, and the equipment still has a high residual value after using for a period, so the enterprise could sell the used equipment to reduce the cost, that means the value of the equipment is partially reversible, and because the value of the equipment is very high, so the enterprise has to pay the responding transaction cost when buying and selling the equipment.According to the characteristics of durable equipment, in this paper, we fully considering the factor of equipment depreciation, residual value and transaction cost, and assuming a linear relationship between transaction cost and equipment value. We first design the optimal certainty strategy of durable equipment on-line rental, and obtained its competitive ratio. And to make up the shortcoming of deterministic strategy that is too conservative, we also design the risk-reward strategy base on general forecast and probabilistic forecast respectively, which allow the decision makers choose the strategy according to their forecast. And according to the example simulation we can find that:the risk-reward strategy base on general forecast is a development of certainty strategy, and the certainty strategy is extreme case of risk-reward strategy base on general forecast when r=1. the risk-reward strategy base on probabilistic forecast is a development of risk-reward strategy base on general forecast, and the risk-reward strategy base on general forecast is extreme case of risk-reward strategy base on probabilistic forecast when P=0and P=1. So this paper provides sufficient theoretical basis and new investment philosophy for the decision makers.