| Unlike other products,fresh agricultural products,such as fruits,vegetables,and dairy products have short life cycles,and are easy to deteriorate and corrode,thus increasing the difficulty of inventory and pricing management of the firms,which is concerned by the industry and scholars.This thesis applies marketing,operation management,operations research,optimal control theory,and other related theories and methods to exploring the inventory control and dynamic pricing of fresh agricultural products as below:First,this thesis studies the optimal pricing for fresh agricultural products with the product freshness deteriorating with time.The demand is dependent on the price and product freshness.Assuming that product freshness is a continuous variable decaying over time,this thesis forms an optimal control system with distributed parameter through characterizing the evolution of the stock by a first-order linear partial differential equation of time and product freshness with the objective of maximizing the firm’s profit.Results show that if the products differ in freshness,then the firm should price items differentially based on the heterogeneity of product;if the products are of the same freshness level,then the firm should adopt penetration pricing strategy for relatively fresh homogeneous products,and take static pricing strategy for relatively old homogeneous units.Next,considering the cost factor of price adjustment,this thesis studies the dynamic pricing for fresh agricultural products.Based on the inventory dynamics and the fact that the price adjustment cost is proportional to the frequency of price changes,this thesis establishes an optimization problem,which is a non-smooth optimal control problem aiming at maximizing the firm’s profit.When the price adjustment cost is vary small,the optimal solution can be derived through the Pontryagin’s maximum principle.When the price adjustment cost is large,the sub-optimal solution can be obtained via the combination of dynamic pricing,static pricing and the application of the search algorithm.Besides,the upper bound of the performance difference between the sub-optimal solution and the optimal one is given.Then,considering the deterioration rate as a function of time,this thesis investigates the inventory control and dynamic pricing policies for fresh agricultural products.An inventory evolution with a time-varying deterioration rate and an optimization system model that maximizes the profit of the system are formulated.Results show that the optimal dynamic pricing policy refers to a penetration pricing policy.When the shelf life of the product is relatively long,the firm should enlarge the replenishment quantity,prolong the replenishment cycle length,but take no preservation technology investment.When the shelf life is relatively short,the firm should strengthen the preservation technology investment with a relatively small unit holding cost or a relatively large unit purchasing cost.Finally,this thesis investigates the joint dynamic pricing,inventory and shipment consolidation strategies for fresh agricultural products.Under a firm’s internal distribution system which consists of a warehouse distribution center and multiple independent stores,this thesis establishes a multi-location inventory and pricing model to maximize the profit of the system.The joint strategies of optimal pricing,inventory and shipment consolidation are obtained via the backward induction in which the Pontryagin’s maximum principle,the parameter optimization and the search algorithm are used respectively.Results show that dynamic pricing and shipment consolidation policies exert substitutable effects on raising the firm’s profit,and that the dynamic price exhibits nonmonotonicity with respect to deterioration rate and unit holding cost. |
