A distribution free approach to newsvendor problem with pricing

Syed Asif Raza*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

35 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The newsvendor problem with pricing is an important tool that provides the relationship between the operational and marketing issues at the firm’s level. This paper investigates the use of the distribution free approach to solve the standard newsvendor problem with pricing and its extension to the holding and shortage cost case. The approach is vital for the situations in which a firm may be missing demand distribution information or historical demand data may not fit any standard probability distributions. The approach develops deterministic approximations by establishing lower bounds on the expected revenues of the standard newsvendor problem with pricing and its extension. The lower bounds are shown jointly concave in price and order quantity. It is also demonstrated that the use of this approach can yield closed form expressions for jointly optimal pricing and order quantities which can find many practical managerial applications in several industries facing yield management decisions. Numerical experimentation demonstrates the performance of the distribution free approach under various demand situations.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)335-358
Number of pages24
Journal4OR
Volume12
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 27 2014
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Distribution free approach
  • Newsvendor problem
  • Pricing
  • Revenue management
  • Stochastic inventory control

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Management Information Systems
  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Management Science and Operations Research
  • Computational Theory and Mathematics

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