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

受平板电视分销商所面临问题的启发，我们考虑了生命周期短的(耐用)产品的产品补充和定价决策问题。具体地说，我们考虑了库存系统中的联合定价和库存控制，其中采购成本可能是时变的，需求可能取决于过去的累计销售额。产品的采购成本与生产成本密切相关，生产成本可能会因为学习效应而降低，也可能会因为原材料和劳动力成本的增加而增加。虽然这种现象很普遍，但在一般文献中还没有得到很好的研究。当采购成本随时间变化时，我们首先关注于确定库存控制的结构。我们提出的研究的第二部分集中在手机、电视和电脑等生命周期较短的耐用产品上。关于创新(耐用)产品的传播，它在市场营销文献中得到了很好的研究。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，并依赖于过去的累计销售额。我们研究了这种环境下的最优定价和库存控制，扩展了现有文献中通常假设当前需求不依赖于过去销售的假设。然后，我们考虑了上述两个模型的混合模型，其中需求依赖于过去的累计销售额，并且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。

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.