Advance Purchase Discounts Versus Clearance Sales
研究垄断者在总需求确定但个体需求不确定时，为何有些商品（如机票）对早买者打折，而另一些（如剧院票）对晚买者打折，并分析两种定价策略的最优选择条件。
This article considers advance selling problems. It explains why some goods (e.g. airline tickets) are sold cheap to early buyers, while others (e.g. theatre tickets) offer discounts to those who buy late. We derive the profit maximising selling strategy for a monopolist when aggregate demand is certain but buyers face uncertainty about their individual demands. When aggregate demand exceeds capacity, both Advance Purchase Discounts as well as Clearance Sales might be optimal. We determine how the comparison of these price discrimination strategies depends on the rationing rule, capacity costs and the availability of temporal capacity limits, price commitment and resale. Copyright © The Author(s). Journal compilation © Royal Economic Society 2009.