Research On The Limited-Time Discount Pricing Decision Considering Consumer Demand Transfer

In recent years,"Double Eleven" and other limited-time discount promotions bring mutual benefits for both merchants and consumers.However,due to the fast-paced life and the rapid development of e-commerce,the development of physical merchants has been stagnant.In addition,the epidemic has brought a great threat to people’s health and also made physical merchant loss serious.How to make pricing decisions scientifically to increase the profitability of physical merchants has become a topic worthy of in-depth study.In this thesis,we consider consumer strategic behavior in the limited-time discount model and construct a multi-channel two-stage limited-time discount pricing model through utility theory,decision trees and mathematical modeling.We found that:(1)consumers’ tendency to wait for limited-time discount purchases is weakened by their busy schedules,and merchants can set appropriate regular prices and discounts to encourage consumers to purchase during the regular price period to increase profits;(2)the optimal regular price and discount price decisions for limited-time discount strategies are related to the promotion time,and this relationship varies with market characteristics;(3)the opening of online channels along with offline limited-time discounts may reduce consumer churn and thus increase profits,but the increase in profits decreases with the increase in consumers’ online purchase utility.In addition,the expansion section of this thesis considers two scenarios: the existence of online loyal consumers in the market and the presence of online preferential consumers in the market.In the former case,merchants can still consider limited-time discounts to take advantage of consumers’ strategic behavior to segment the market and increase profits,and they need to reduce discounts as the number of online loyal consumers increases.In the latter case,(1)the motivation for differentiated pricing is consumers’ channel preference,and consumers’ strategic behavior brings harm to merchants’ profits;(2)as consumers’ preference for online increases,the price difference and profits of the limited-time discounting strategy gradually increase;(3)whether consumers prefer online or not,merchants can differentiate pricing to increase profits under certain circumstances.