Pricing and inventory control for a product with time-varying cost and demand

成本和需求随时间变化的产品的定价和库存控制

• 批准号: 89698-2009
• 负责人: Chen, Hong
• 金额: $ 2.04万
• 依托单位: University of British Columbia
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2009-01-01 至 2010-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=421557
• 关键词: Pricing; inventory; control; product; time

Motivated by a problem faced by a flat panel television distributor, we consider product replenishment and pricing decision making problem for the (durable) product with short life cycle. Specifically, we consider joint pricing and inventory control in an inventory system where the procurement cost may be time-varying and the demand may depend on the cumulative past sales. The procurement cost of a product is closely related to the production cost which may reduce over time due to learning effect or increase due to increased raw material and labor cost. While such phenomena are pervasive, they have not been well-studied in the literature in general. We first focus on identifying the structure of the inventory control when the procurement cost varies over time. The second part of our proposed research focuses on the durable product with short life cycles such as cell phones, TVs and computers. It has been well-studied in the marketing literature on the diffusion of the innovative (durable) product. Both theoretical model and empirical evidence supports that the sales during the product life cycle change over time and are dependent on cumulative past sales. We study optimal pricing and inventory control in such environment; this extends the existing literature that usually assumes the current demand does not depend on past sales. Then, we consider a hybrid of the above two models, where the demand is dependent on past cumulative sales, and the procurement cost is time-sensitive. Finally, we propose an empirical validation for the above models.

基于一个平板电视分销商所面临的问题，我们考虑了短生命周期（耐用）产品的产品补货和定价决策问题。 具体来说，我们考虑联合定价和库存控制的库存系统中的采购成本可能是随时间变化的，需求可能取决于过去的累计销售。产品的采购成本与生产成本密切相关，生产成本可能因学习效应而随时间降低，或因原材料和劳动力成本增加而增加。虽然这种现象很普遍，但一般文献中尚未对其进行充分研究。我们首先重点关注当采购成本随时间变化时库存控制的结构。第二部分的研究重点是手机、电视、电脑等寿命周期较短的耐用产品。在关于创新（耐用）产品的传播的营销文献中，这一点得到了充分的研究。理论模型和经验证据都支持产品生命周期内的销售额随时间变化，并依赖于过去的累积销售额。我们研究在这种环境下的最优定价和库存控制，这扩展了现有的文献，通常假设当前的需求不依赖于过去的销售。然后，我们考虑上述两个模型的混合，其中需求依赖于过去的累积销售，采购成本是时间敏感的。最后，我们对上述模型进行了实证验证。