Inventory Management and Endogenous Demand: Investigating the Role of Customer Referrals, Defections, and Product Market Failure
研究了一个有限人口动态随机库存模型，其中未来需求受库存政策影响：满意的客户会推荐新客户，而缺货和延期交货导致客户流失甚至产品市场失败，为低市场份额企业提供了不同的库存策略。
ABSTRACT This article optimizes a finite population, dynamic, stochastic inventory model where future demand is endogenous to inventory policy. Specifically, satisfied customers are not only likely to remain with the firm, but may also refer new customers. In contrast, backorders and lost sales may cause disgruntled customers to defect and potentially cause them to dissuade new customers from doing business with the firm. Thus, inventory policy and customer demand are endogenous. Further, the model allows for the possibility that too many customer defections may lead to product market failure. The incorporation of these innovations into our model yields inventory policies that differ substantially from those reported in the literature, with the greatest differences occurring when the firm has low to medium market share.