关键词: 顺序搜寻, 搜寻成本, 可替换产品, 定价策略, 库存决策

Abstract: Aiming to solve a pricing and inventory problem which takes search cost into account, this paper constructs an optimization model based on Markov decision process from consumer’s utility and companies’ revenue perspective. As for consumers, we make an analysis of purchasing and searching conditions, and also study the changing tendency of consumers’ reservation utility and the purchase probability of corresponding products under fixed search cost or decreasing marginal search cost respectively. Besides, different from many other researchers, we assume that it is not certain that consumers will complete all their products’ search before they make a purchase due to research cost. In terms of companies, we build and solve revenue models and inventory model in different search order settings, then extend them to dynamic pricing environment, so as to provide better pricing and inventory decision support.

Key words: sequential search, search cost, substitute products, pricing strategy, inventory decision