Assortment Planning And Order-Pricing Strategy Research On Perishable Goods

Since 1990s, competition for the perishable products is getting more and more fierce, which is caused by many reasons, such as (1) the improvement of science and technology; (2) the development of economy and global information network; (3) the formation of global market and the increasing diversification of consumer demand. Perishable products' types and quantities grow more and more, and enterprises have to make decision within shorter lead time, improve product quality, reduce the cost and improve the service. Then, how to make a reasonable assortment planning and order-pricing strategies for perishable product's become a hot topic.This investigation is about the assortment planning and order-pricing management for perishable products in two periods when the demand is uncertain, and the modeling process is divided as two periods. First, we model for the second period. We introduce the consumer utility function to the inventory model in the second period. The result shows that the optimal strategy is not only related to different quality level, but also related to the deteriorating inventory. Then, back up to the first period, we create a total profit function for product selling within two periods, and get the optimal strategy when the demand is uniform distributed by derivation. Finally, referred with the data from Koenigsberg and Ferguson's article, the total profit in our optimal strategy will be higher from 19% to 30% on average compared with the un-optimal strategy when enterprise does not carry any deteriorating inventory.