In business practice the misalignment between frequent inventory adjustments and a sticky price is common. Motivated by Pipi Milk, a diary manufacturer who commits its customer at a fixed price… Click to show full abstract
In business practice the misalignment between frequent inventory adjustments and a sticky price is common. Motivated by Pipi Milk, a diary manufacturer who commits its customer at a fixed price for a whole year meanwhile weekly replenishes its cheese product stock at a specific batch size, this paper develops an integrated constant pricing and inventory control model in a periodic-review system with batch order consideration. For such a system, our focus is on an ( nQ , r )- p policy: the price p is determined and committed at the beginning of the planning horizon; inventories are managed based on an ( nQ , r ) policy with reorder level r and order quantities at non-negative integer multiples of batch size Q . With a fixed ordering cost included, we develop an efficient algorithm to compute the optimal policy parameters with the purpose to maximize the expected long-run average profit. We also numerically investigate the policy performance and verify its advantages by comparing to a sequential optimization of price and inventory decisions. Finally, managerial insights are generated.
               
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