基于降价预期的生鲜农产品定价策略研究

Pricing Policy of Fresh Agricultural Products Based on Mark-down Anticipation

顾客的价格感知影响需求。以降价预期刻画顾客对当前价格的感知,针对零售商在维持需求和利润最大化条件下降价两种策略,研究了生鲜农产品的最优定价问题。研究表明,零售商的利润随着价格认同系数增加而增大;顾客对独立产品存在降价预期不会影响零售商的利润,但是对替代品存在降价预期,零售商的利润会下降;零售商若能完全观察到顾客存在降价预期,将抬高初始价格。

Consumers are accustomed to waiting for discount sales items.Consumers today have largely been trained to wait for sales.Many years ago,market research organizations found that more than half of consumers plan to wait for the discount sales.Competitive market further forces retailers to offer steeper discounts by starting the discount period earlier each year.These pressures are creating the vicious cycle that consumers expect increasingly generous discounts and retailers try to fulfill customers＇ expectations by largely reducing their margins.Decreased profit margins are challenging retailers to provide satisfactory services to customers.The current literature lacks studies on the behavior of waiting for sales,a strategic consumer behavior that is growing in importance.The purpose of the paper is to study the optimal pricing policy for fresh agricultural products based on the assumption that consumers＇ anticipation for price markdown can influence customer demand. Fresh agricultural products are perishable.The retailers will need to clear inventory to reduce loss before products becomes perished.Therefore,two assumptions are needed to study agricultural products.If loss is serious,the retailer couldn＇t reach satisfactory profit level.So we assume the retailer have two alternative policies.First,the retailer reduces product price to promote sales in order to ensure that customer demand returns to its primary level normal level.Second,retailers try to maximize profit by optimizing price markdown amplitude.We also consider that fresh agricultural products are sensitive to competitive price. The rest of this paper organized as follows.We first introduce two factors,including current price identification coefficients and markdown amplitude of the classic demand function.A profit model is developed for single product.We extend the previous model to understanding the demand of current price identification coefficient,and price-gap sensibility for two substitutable products.We use the linear programming solution to obtain optimal markdown amplitudes under substitutable policies.A numerical example is used to help illustrate the usefulness of the model.In conclusion,a retailer＇s profit will increase when consumers＇ price identification increases.A retailer＇s profit will not change when a consumer＇s markdown anticipation exists just for single product.A retailer＇s profit will decrease when consumers＇ markdown anticipation exist both for two substitutable products.At last,a retailer will increase the initial product price if it can obtain all information about its consumers＇ markdown anticipation.