Dynamic pricing for e-tailers with two B2C platform online-stores

摘要

This paper studies the optimal dynamic pricing policies for an e-tailer of seasonal products who operates two online-stores with finite inventory level on two different B2C platform websites. As more B2C websites become B2C platform websites, e-tailers can set up different online-stores on more than one platform. But different platforms have different inventory management rules, which can affect the e-tailers' revenue over the sale season. So the e-tailers can apply different pricing policies to deal with such situation. We first present discriminating pricing policy while two online-stores inventory management is independent, half-independent and unified. We analyze some structural properties of the optimal pricing policies under different inventory management rules. Then we study unified pricing policy while two online-stores under three different inventory management rules which are the same as discriminating pricing policies. At last we give some numerical examples to confirm our results, and compare different models. Based on numerical examples we give several management implications for e-tailers.