Optimal Markdown Mechanisms in the Presence of Rational Customers with Multi-unit Demands

摘要

In recent years, we have witnessed an increased adoption of existing dynamic pricing strategies and their further development. In this paper, we analyze the optimal design of a markdown pricing mechanism, a form of dynamic pricing, in which the price decreases over time according to a pre-announced schedule. In the presence of limited supply, buyers who choose to purchase at a lower price may face a scarcity in supply. Our focus is on the structure of the optimal markdown mechanisms in the presence of rational or "strategic" buyers. We first examine a complete information setting where each customer demands multiple units. We then generalize our analysis to an incomplete information setting, where the seller does not know the demands of each customer type. For both settings, we compare the seller's profits resulting from the optimal markdown prices and the optimal single price.