Asymmetric Pricing and Replenishment Controls for Substitutable Products
研究一家销售两种可替代产品（季节性产品和常规产品）的企业，在定价和补货控制不对称的情况下，如何制定最优的定价、补货和初始库存决策，并探讨了降价策略和质量感知差异的影响。
ABSTRACT We study settings in which a firm offering substitutable products may face restrictions in its ability to either replenish or adjust the prices of some of its products, resulting in asymmetries in the pricing and replenishment controls available for each product. Specifically, we first consider a firm selling two substitutable products, a seasonal and a regular product, which differ in how their inventories are managed over a finite selling horizon. The seasonal product has an initial inventory with no further replenishment opportunities and is dynamically priced throughout the selling horizon, whereas the regular product has a static price but can be replenished periodically subject to a limited capacity. We characterize the firm's optimal replenishment decision for the regular product as well as the dynamic pricing and initial quantity selection decisions for the seasonal product. Through the insights gained by the optimal policy structure, we also develop a simple‐to‐implement and effective heuristic policy. In addition, we investigate profit implications of markdown policies and study how potential differences in quality perceptions between the products impact the optimal policy. Lastly, we consider further types of asymmetries resulting in pricing with partial replenishment or replenishment with partial pricing and provide insights on the value of additional pricing and replenishment flexibilities. Our study helps broaden our understanding of joint pricing and replenishment decisions for substitutable products under circumstances where these decisions may not all be available for all products.