Abstract: Nowadays the out-of-stock phenomenon is very popular, which reduces the utility of the customers. For this problem, the sellers always provide the availability guarantees services. Because it is proved that consumer behaviors have the important influence on the seller's optimal decisions, the value of two availability guarantees including inventory commitment and out-of-stock compensation is studied based on consumer strategic purchasing and returning behaviors. It is assumed that a seller sold the single produce in two sale periods (full price and salvage price). Three models of no any guarantees, inventory commitment and out-of-stock compensation are established. By analyzing these models, it is found that out-of-stock have no effect on the optimal refund, and that consumer strategic purchasing behavior destroys the positive function of inventory commitment which can be offset using unconstrained returning policy, and that the value of truthful commitment is better than the false one. When the utility of compensate is over the cost (called an efficient compensation), the out-of-stock compensation is better than the truthful inventory commitment. At last, using the software Matlab, an analysis of an example was applied and tested our models correctness.

Key words: availability guarantees, return without any reason, out-of-stock, consumer strategic behaviors