Browsing by Subject "Pricing policy"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Open Access
Markdown budgets for retail buyers: help or hindrance?
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2017) Şen, A.; Talebian, M.
For many retailers, markdown decisions are taken by retail buyers whose compensation is based on sales revenue so their objective is to maximize it through the season. This implies that the buyers' objectives are not perfectly aligned with the overall profitability the firm. Many retailers set markdown budgets prior to the season to control margin erosion and increase profitability. Markdown budget constrains the buyers on the amount of discounts that they can apply on a given inventory of merchandise and sets a limit on the dollar value of markdowns for the season. While markdown budgets may be useful in preventing excessive discounts, they can have a detrimental effect on the buyers' ability to respond to poor market and remove distressed inventory. We investigate the effectiveness of this practice in aligning the incentives of buyers with that of the firm, and provide guidance on how these budgets should be established ahead of time. We consider a firm with a fixed inventory of a seasonable item, and a single chance to mark the price down. The retailer knows only the demand distribution at the beginning of the season, but the market information is revealed during the season to the buyer. We first characterize the buyer's markdown policy and understand the circumstances under which this can be different from the retailer's markdown policy. We use our model to determine the optimal markdown budget and quantify its effectiveness considering different factors such as the level of demand uncertainty, initial markup, and market's responsiveness to markdowns.
Open Access
Parking as a loss leader at shopping malls
(Pergamon Press, 2016) Ersoy, F. Y.; Hasker, K.; Inci, E.
This paper investigates the pricing of malls in an environment where shoppers choose between a car and public transportation in getting to a suburban mall. The mall implicitly engages in mixed bundling; it sells goods bundled with parking to shoppers who come by car, and only goods to shoppers who come by public transportation. There are external costs of discomfort in public transportation due to crowdedness. Thus, shoppers using public transportation deter each other. The mall internalizes these external costs, much like a policy maker. To do so, it raises the sales price of the good and sets a parking fee less than parking's marginal cost. Hence, parking is always a loss leader. Surprisingly, this pricing scheme is not necessarily distortionary. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd.
Open Access
Public sector pricing behavior and inflation risk premium in Turkey
(Routledge, 2003) Berument, Hakan
Turkey has had a high level of inflation since the mid-1970s. Governments use various fiscal and monetary policy tools to control inflation. In addition to these tools, governments also attempt to control inflation by regulating the prices of publicly produced goods and services. Governments either use the publicly produced goods' prices as a nominal anchor to decrease inflation, for example, the July 1997 and early 2000 anti-inflation programs, as a part of their general anti-inflation programs, or they try to postpone price increases of publicly produced goods and services until after elections, as was the case prior to the 1991, 1995, and 1999 elections. However, governments ultimately had to correct the lower prices in the public sector, mainly to avoid losses in the state-owned enterprises. In accordance with this, Turkish data suggest that, on average, price increases in the private and public sectors are approximately the same; however, these price increases are less frequent in the public sector than in the private sector. The purpose of this article is to show that this infrequency of price changes in the public sector increases the volatility of the general price level, causing uncertainty in forecasting general price level, and this, in turn, increases interest rates.