关键词: 消费者策略行为, 目标客户定位, 报童模型, 限量供应, 异质消费者

Abstract: Clearance is an important marketing way for the seller to clear the redundant perishable products as they easily deteriorate over time. In view of the possible discounts in the future, the strategic consumers will determine to buy at full price or wait till the clearance, while the myopic consumers may opt to buy early or leave the market. The coexistence of strategic consumers and myopic consumers is commonly seen in real life. This paper mainly studies the newsvendor problem in this setting. Due to the diversified demand of consumers, the seller would be better off from classifying them and targeting the most valuable consumers. Consumer targeting plays an essential role in precision marketing and customer relationship management. For example, the target consumers of high-end fashion or luxury products are obviously less than those of low-end fashion. Considering the difficulty in acquiring and processing the consumer information, the seller may entrust the professional organization to figure out the target consumers, where the target consumers are those who are expected to buy the products early. The seller’s decision on the full price and order quantity with the given target consumers deserves much attention. Moreover, capacity rationing is widely considered as an efficient marketing method to alleviate the negative effect of strategic waiting behavior. Thus, a newsvendor model is constructed where the target consumers are given and the products are rationed. As we all know, consumers of high willingness to pay are more likely to buy early. The target consumers are comprised of the consumers whose valuation for the products stays great. The consumers with small valuation would be taken as the un-target consumers. And the proportion of target strategic consumers in strategic consumers couldn’t surpass that of target myopic consumers in myopic consumers. Based on this, three consumer-targeting strategies are proposed in this paper. They differ if the strategic consumers or the whole myopic consumers are targeted. The Rational Expectation (RE) theory is applied to solve the above newsvendor model. In this model, the full price and order quantity are decided by the seller with the aim to attain the maximal profit and encourage the target consumers or the un-target consumers to buy early or not to buy early. This paper compares the profits the seller gains in these strategies given the total number of target consumers as well, which can teach the seller to adopt the optimal consumer-targeting strategy. In the analysis, the impact of consumers’ composition and heterogeneity on the decision is emphasized.
The results are as follows. (i)The seller may abandon the target consumer market that is comprised of only a few strategic consumers but a lot of myopic consumers in case their heterogeneity is significant. (ii)The larger the number of strategic consumers are taken as the target consumers, the lower the price could be charged, which increases the utility of buying early or the fewer the products might be ordered, which decreases the availability of discounted products, so as to fulfill their early purchase. Instead, the seller would opt to order in larger quantities when the strategic consumers’ ratio is over a threshold. Because the new target strategic consumers also contribute to a large decrease in the availability of discounted products. The decrease in order quantity may lead to the inadequate supply. This means the target customers for some fast-fashion brands such as UNIQLO and Zara, may include a large proportion of strategic consumers, so the retailer cannot blindly reduce the supply to attract their target consumers to buy early, but needs to consider the scale of strategic consumers in the market. (iii)The significant consumer heterogeneity indicates the low minimal valuation of target consumers which causes a somewhat low price to be charged. Nevertheless, the seller may be better off from the significant consumer heterogeneity if the proportions of target strategic consumers and target myopic consumers are small or the unit order cost is trivial. This indicates the seller can appropriately reduce the order cost such as changing the mode of transportation, signing wholesale price contracts with suppliers, etc. or choose a consumer-targeting strategy that includes a small number of myopic or strategic consumers so as to alleviate the bad effect of consumer heterogeneity. (iv)The consumer-targeting strategy that excludes the strategic consumers will be infeasible when the total number of target consumers stays over a threshold, otherwise the strategy that targets the strategic consumers and the whole myopic consumers is infeasible. Combining the analytical and numerical study, targeting a large number of myopic consumers, i.e., targeting the whole myopic consumers or excluding the strategic consumers, will be optimal if their heterogeneity degree is small. Targeting a few of myopic consumers and a large number of strategic consumers can be preferred only if their heterogeneity becomes significant and the target consumers’ ratio is medium large, where the target myopic consumers’ proportion remains over a threshold or falls in between the 2 thresholds.

Key words: strategic consumer behavior, consumer targeting, newsvendor problem, quantity rationing, consumer heterogeneity