Seminar (Dept. of Management Science and Engineering)

Theme：Optimal staffing for Online Education Companies with Free Trials

Speaker：Wanshan Zhu, Jing Li (School of Business, Renmin University of China)

Time：2021-12-01 10:00

Address：Room 1008, Mingde Business Building

Language：Chinese/English

ABSTRACT：

With the wide application of Internet technology, online education companies, which often provide free trials, sprung up everywhere lately. Sales representatives and teachers are the crucial resources, and their staffing directly affects the profitability of the online education companies. We study the optimal staffing problem of the companies and the impact of free-trial periods. By modeling and numerical simulation, we find that in optimal staffing, the sales staff and the teaching staff follow a ratio depending on the free trial periods. Furthermore, we characterize conditions for optimally using multiple sales channels.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY：

Wanshan Zhu is a professor in Business School, Renmin University of China.  He received Ph.D. in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA, in 2005.  His research interests include incentive mechanism design in supply chain, dynamic inventory control and behavioural operations management. He published several papers in premier operations management journals such as Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, European Journal of Operational Research, Naval Logistic Research, IIE Transactions, and Decision Sciences. He taught in Singapore Management University in Singapore (2006–2011) and Tsinghua University (2011–2019) before joining Renmin University of China in 2019.