Inter-Temporal Pricing And Operational Mechanisms In The Presence Of Strategic Consumers

Inter-temporal pricing is one important engine in revenue management, and its traditional application areas are airlines, hotels, car rental, travel routes and other service industries. In recent years, it has been widely used in retail, sports, entertainment event management, real estate, transportation and manufacturing industries. Inter-temporal pricing refers to a pricing model which changes prices over time, place or different consumers. Different pricing in time refers to prices of product change continuously according to the state of supply and demand over time.With general inter-temporal pricing and development of information technology, more and more consumers'buying behavior becomes strategic. These strategic consumers will use information technology to obtain pricing and inventory information of firms, form rational expectations about the future price trend of firms and time their favorable purchase. Even if the current market price is lower than the product evaluation of the consumer, strategic consumers are still will wait for a low price to purchase to obtain greater consumer surplus. Therefore, Inter-temporal pricing in theoretical research and practical applications are faced with great challenge due to the existence of consumer strategic behavior.The effects of strategic consumers on the inter-temporal pricing decision and income can not be ignored. Therefore, how to take consumer strategic behavior into account in decision-making model,to introduce operational mechanisms to mitigate the effects,and to induce consumers to purchase early, for improve the profit of firms, is very necessary for theoretical research and practical applications.This thesis uses game theory and dynamic optimization theory, studies thoroughly the inter-temporal pricing and operational mechanisms in the presence of strategic consumers. We studies the topic through introducing callable mechanism,price-match,and quick response,from the aspects of service provider with given capacity and retailer without given capacity,based on the reviews of current researches of inter-temporal pricing and consumer behavior theory.Fitst, we investigate the inter-temporal pricing with cancellation when the strategic customer's value is uncertain. We establish a two-period inter-temporal pricing model,in which the consumers with low valuation will cancel the service before the delivery time of the service. The results show that, value uncertain and cancellation affect the optimal inter-temporal pricing strategy, and when there are enough realized sales in advance period and high-end customers in spot period, service provider can improve profits from refund for cancellation and resale.Next, we study the problem of airlines'inter-temporal pricing in the presence of strategic consumers; this chapter employs a new callable mechanism. We construct a single-leg, two-period inter-temporal pricing model with strategic consumer behavior and solve the optimal pricing strategy under callable mechanism. We show that the callable mechanism can mitigate the affect of strategic consumers and improve the revenue of airlines, and the numerical simulations are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the callable mechanism.Then, we assume that there are strategic and myopic customers in the market with heterogeneous valuation, analysis the dynamic pricing model with strategic customers, and the impact of price match policy. We find that the delayed buying of strategic customers affect the retailer's pricing strategy and make profit decreased. The price match policy can be a mechanism to eliminate the delay in the purchase of strategic customers, and improve the retailer's earnings.At last, we study the pricing and order quantity decisions of perishable product in the presence of strategic consumers. This chapter uses game theory and consumer behavior theory, and studies the waiting behavior of the strategic consumers how to affect the retailer's decisions and expected profit. Then we use a mean of quick response to mitigate the impact of strategic consumer behavior. The study result shows that, when the cost of quick response belongs to a relatively mild range, the retailer can reduce the original order quantity through quick response to mitigate the impacts, take higher price and earn more expected profit. The expanded research investigates the remanufacturing flexible replenish based on pricing of the remanufacture of high tech perishable goods。...