A dynamic pricing policy for perishables with stochastic demand

Abstract

III this study, we consider the pricing of perishables in an inventory system where items have a fixi'd lifetime. Unit demands come from a Poisson Process with a price-dependent rate. The instances at which an item is withdrawn from inventory due to demand constitute decision epochs for setting the sales price; the time elapsed between two such consecutive instances is called a period. The sales price at each decision epoch is taken to be a lunction of Tj denoting the remaining lifetime when tin' inventory level drops to z, i = 1,...,Q. The objective is to determine the optimal pricing policy (under the proposed class) and the optimal initial stocking level to maximize the discounted expected profit. A Dynamic Programming approach is used the solve the problem numerically. Using the backward recursion, the optimal price paths are determined for the discounted expected profit for various combinations of remaining lifetimes. Our numerical studies indicate that a single price policy results in significantly lower profits when compared with our formulation.