| Retailers that sell perishable items such as fashion clothing often cut prices at the end of the selling season.Such frequent price reductions make customers realize that they may buy products at a discount price in the future and wait for sales.As a result,customers choose the best purchase time by weighing the utility,which is called strategic customer behavior.The utility is not only affected by customers’ valuation and price of products,but also related to their anticipated regret.Customers who buy immediately but later find that there is a discount will experience high-price regret;Customers who wait for sales but find that the product is sold out will experience stockout regret.With the development of information technology,customers have more and more access to information such as product price and availability.Therefore,customers’ anticipated regret has a significant impact on their purchasing decisions.Strategic customer behavior with anticipated regret complicates customers’ buying behavior,and makes it more difficult for retailers to decide on optimal pricing and inventory.In view of this,based on rational expectation equilibrium hypothesis and game theory,this paper constructed a newsvendor model considering strategic customer behavior with anticipated regret,and analyzed the optimal pricing and inventory decisions of a single monopolistic retailer who selling a single product in a two-stage market with uncertain demand.Firstly,based on rational expectation equilibrium hypothesis,this paper studied the retailer’s optimal pricing,inventory and profit when strategic customers have anticipated regret.Results show that: high-price regret aggravates strategic customer behavior,and the retailer should reduce the price and inventory to alleviate the profit reduction.Stockout regret mitigated strategic customer behavior,and the retailer should increase the price and inventory to increase the profit.In addition,in order to increase the profit,if the difference between highprice-regret intensity and stockout regret intensity is greater than the change intensity,the retailer should enhance stockout regret.On the contrary,the retailer should reduce high-price regret.Secondly,the price commitment policy(PC)and the quick response policy(QR)are studied,and the value of these policies to alleviate strategic customer behavior are analyzed.Results show that: PC is only effective for high-profit products and cannot fully eliminate the influence of strategic customer behavior.The value of PC increases with the increase of highprice regret,and decreases with the increase of stockout regret.QR is always effective and can fully eliminate the influence of strategic customer behavior when replenishment cost is low.The value of QR decreases with the increase of high-price regret and increases with the increase of stockout regret.When replenishment cost is lower than a certain threshold,QR outperforms than PC.When the replenishment cost is higher than this threshold,if the anticipated regret intensity is greater than a certain threshold,QR is better;otherwise,PC is better.Finally,the buyback contract(BB)considering PC and the revenue-sharing contract(RS)considering QR are studied,and the retailer’s strategy selection problem under supply chain coordination is analyzed.Results show that: BB is not affected by customers’ anticipated regret.The optimal revenue-sharing coefficient and wholesale price in RS increase with the increase of high-price regret and decrease with the increase of stockout regret.When the buyback price is given,if the revenue-sharing coefficient is less than a threshold value,the retailer prefers PC,otherwise,the retailer prefers QR.The threshold value increases with the increase of highprice regret,and decreases with the increase of stockout regret.When the revenue-sharing coefficient is between two thresholds,if the anticipated regret intensity less than a threshold,the retailer should adopt PC,on the contrary,the retailer should adopt QR. |
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