Strategic Pricing With Consumer Behavior And Market Disruption

This dissertation explores pricing strategies by taking the consumers behavior and market disruption into consideration in fashion industry.That is because fashion supply chain' characteristics make the fashion industry as one suitable avenue for efficient supply chain management practices.Note that price decisions in this industry usually occur in a competitive market,such as two traditional offline retailers,one online retailer and one offline retailer.Besides,the market of fashion industry is likely to be disrupted.Furthermore,with the development of Internet and information dissemination,consumers can catch the product information conveniently and then incline to be more strategic and ingenious when purchasing.Specifically,they are more concerning behavioral factors which may influence their wiliness to pay and excepted utility of products.Although pricing has been well-studied in both empirical and analytical model literature,little study focuses on how to make pricing decisions by considering the specific consumer conditions,market conditions in fashion supply chain.This dissertation utilizes theoretical models to study two important behavior factors that may affect pricing decisions,i.e.,strategic choice and waiting behavior,and reference price in Chapter 3 and 4.The study in Chapter 3 focuses on the competitive pricing between a fast fashion seller and a luxury seller with the effects of consumers' strategic choice and waiting behavior which means consumers can strategically determine which seller to buy and which period to buy.The study in Chapter 4 focuses on the competitive pricing between an online retailer and an offline retailer in the supply chain.It supposes that consumers have a different preference among these two channels and they usually make a comparison between the retail prices of the online and offline channels,thereby forming a reference price in mind.Except for consumers' behavior factors,pricing decision are influenced by market conditions.The study in Chapter 5 investigates the pricing decision between a manufacturer and a retailer under the market disruption with pull and push contracts.Also,the coordination problem is incorporated into the pricing problem in this setting.In summary,this dissertation incorporates the consumers' behavioral factors and market disruption in the pricing decisions and obtains some analytical solutions which may present some suggestions for firms in reality.Besides,the study in this dissertation also belongs to a growing number of studies combining the microeconomics,marketing with psychological discipline and it shows that some behavior factors and market disruption really have a profound influence on the decision making.