关键词: 库存信息披露, 策略型消费者, 两期销售, 定价, 订货

Abstract: With the advance of Internet technology and e-commerce, the convenience and comprehensiveness of consumers' access to product information have been greatly enhanced. By observing online retailer's discount strategies in longterms, consumers are beginning to evaluate the value from waiting for products to cut prices,which may delay their purchases. However, it has been putting tremendous pressure on online retailers. In order to deal with the waiting behavior of consumers,online retailers have been beginning to selectively disclose inventory levels information. For example, there are twenty one online retailers hiding inventory levels information within the thirty firms at the top of Internet Retailer Top 500 list, and of the remaining nine, there are eight online retailers irregularly disclosing the exact inventory levels, and only one sharing inventory levels.Therefore, how online retailers develop inventory disclosure strategies to deal with the waiting behavior of strategic consumers becomes an issue that is worthy of studying.
In this paper, a two-echelon supply chain consisted of a single supplier and a single retailer who sells products in two consecutive periods is considered. Before the selling season begins the online retailer orders products from the supplier as the inventory to meet market demand. After the start of the selling season, the retailer sells products to strategic consumers through online channel.Specially, the online retailer are facing three out-of-stock situations including out-stock in the first period and out-stock in the second period and no out-stock in the two periods, respectively.Moreover, two kinds of inventory disclosure strategies including inventory information sharing and masking are considered respectively.A two-period sales profit maximization problem is then developed to determine the optimal retailer price and order quantity. To solve the above problem, consumers' buying behaviors under the two kinds of inventory disclosure strategies and the three out-stock scenarios are analyzed, and some analytical solutions with sensitivity analysis are presented. Furthermore, numerical examples are performed to analyze the impacts of the parameters on the online retailer's decisions and profit, and compare the two inventory level information disclosure strategies.
The results show that the retailer's optimal pricing and inventory decisions are affected by the consumer's valuation discount coefficient and the sale price in the second period. Especially, the online retailer prefers to share the inventory information when choosing to stock-out in the first period. If the online retailer chooses to stock-out in the second period or no stock-out, there exists a threshold for the consumer's valuation discount coefficient, below which the online retailer will prefer to mask the inventory information; otherwise, he will choose to share the inventory information. The research results provide important reference value and practical significance for enterprises to develop inventory disclosure strategies to cope with strategic consumers.

Key words: inventory information disclosure, strategic consumer, two-period sale, ordering, pricing