考虑残值变化和顾客异质性的零售商定价与库存决策

本文研究策略型消费者对零售商的定价和库存决策的影响。与以往的研究假设残值固定不变,且消费者均为策略型消费者不同的是,本文考虑了顾客的异质性以及残值由清仓期库存决定这一特点。本文的研究表明:在消费者均为策略型消费者,且清楚零售商将采取残值定价策略的情况下,零售商可以通过数量保证策略来提高自身的期望利润,降低库存订货量。在考虑顾客异质性的条件下,当零售商采取估值定价策略时,零售商的最大期望利润与短视型消费者在市场上的比例成正相关。并且,存在一个唯一的阈值点,当短视型消费者在市场上的比例高于这一阈值点时,估值定价策略优于保留价格定价策略,反之,则保留价格定价策略更优。

Pricing and Inventory Decisions with Inventory-Dependent Salvage Value,Strategic Consumer Behavior,and Customer Heterogeneity

In this paper, the impacts of strategic consumer behavior on a retailer's pricing and inventory decisions are studied. Most of the literature on strategic consumer assumes that consumers are all strategic and the salvage value is a constant. The joint effect of heterogeneity of consumer type and inventory-dependent salvage value under the general framework of strategic consumer behavior are considered. In particular, the salvage value depends on leftover inventory at the end of a selling season. The rational expectations equilibrium in the base model is characterized and the model with the considerations of quantity commitment, inventory-dependent salvage value, and customer heterogeneity is extended. When consumers are all strategic and are aware of how the product is salvaged, the retailer's expected profit can be improved and inventory can be decreased with quantity commitment are shown. When consumers are heterogeneous, the retailer can use two pricing strategies, i.e. reservation price and valuation price. The retailer's maximum expected profit will positively relate to the ratio of myopic consumers to all consumers when it employs valuation price strategy. Moreover, there exists a threshold ratio, above which the valuation price strategy dominates the reservation price strategy, and vice versa. Our study provides several new managerial insights on how firms could optimize their profits when faced with strategic consumers.