考虑策略型消费者对产品估值的异质性，并且消费者收到产品后有可能对产品感到不满意，构建了两期决策模型并分别得到了零售商在不允许退货和提供退款保证两种模式下的最优库存分配策略。研究发现，当消费者对产品估值的变化范围较大时，零售商应采用两阶段差别定价，反之则应采用统一定价；当不允许退货时，消费者对产品满意的概率越大，在正常销售阶段购买的消费者就越多；当提供退款保证时，零售商或消费者的退货成本越小，在正常销售阶段购买的消费者就越多。通过与短视型消费者的对比发现，无论是否允许退货，消费者的策略等待行为都降低了零售商的潜在收益。对不允许退货和提供退货保证这两种模式下的零售商利润进行了比较，发现两种模式没有绝对的占优，进而给出了零售商选择不同模式的条件。最后，通过数值模拟分析了消费者满意概率、退货成本和产品价格对零售商决策和利润的影响。
More and more retailers are willing to offer consumers money-back guarantees in regular seasons,which allows customers to return products that do not meet their expectation for a full refund. On the other hand,some consumers often wait to buy until the price mark down in clearance season, and this strategic behavior has a great impact on retailer's inventory and product returns strategies due to the uncertainty of demand. In the meantime, the strategic consumers have the risk of stockout in the clearance season, so they need to decide whether to buy in the regular season. In view of the complex behavior of the consumers, some retailers are attempting to reduce the loss by rationing the inventory reasonably. In this paper, the inventory rationing decisions and consumer return policies are examined in a two-period setting, where the first period is the regular selling season and the second is the clearance season.In this paper, it is assumed that consumers' valuations of products are heterogeneous and they are uncertain about their satisfaction until receiving the products. In addition, consumers' perceived fill rate is not always consistent with the actual fill rate, which reflects the cautious attitude of consumers. First, the base model without money-back guarantees is formulated and the retailer's optimal inventory rationing strategies are obtained. Then the scenario that the retailer offers money-back guarantees in the first period but not in the second period is analyzed. Through the comparison of these two scenarios, some thresholds for the retailer's money-back guarantees are identified.Our study shows that:markdown pricing is optimal when the range of consumers' valuations is large, otherwise uniform pricing is preferred; in the case of no-return, the number of consumers who purchase in regular season is increasing in consumers' satisfaction of products; in the case with money-back guarantees, the number of consumers who purchase inregular season is increasing in both retailer's and consumer's returns cost. Further more the profits under the cases of no-return and money-back guarantees are compared, and the conditions of implementing different returns policies are given.By comparing the case with myopic consumers and that with strategic consumer, it is found that the retailer suffers a loss due to consumers' strategic behavior. Finally, some numerical examples are present to investigate the impacts of consumers' satisfaction, return cost and price on the retailer's optimal decisions and profit. The results of this study can help managers develop better inventory rationingand product return policies.
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