Abstract: In this paper, the impacts of strategic consumer behavior on a retailer's pricing and inventory decisions are studied. Most of the literature on strategic consumer assumes that consumers are all strategic and the salvage value is a constant. The joint effect of heterogeneity of consumer type and inventory-dependent salvage value under the general framework of strategic consumer behavior are considered. In particular, the salvage value depends on leftover inventory at the end of a selling season. The rational expectations equilibrium in the base model is characterized and the model with the considerations of quantity commitment, inventory-dependent salvage value, and customer heterogeneity is extended. When consumers are all strategic and are aware of how the product is salvaged, the retailer's expected profit can be improved and inventory can be decreased with quantity commitment are shown. When consumers are heterogeneous, the retailer can use two pricing strategies, i.e. reservation price and valuation price. The retailer's maximum expected profit will positively relate to the ratio of myopic consumers to all consumers when it employs valuation price strategy. Moreover, there exists a threshold ratio, above which the valuation price strategy dominates the reservation price strategy, and vice versa. Our study provides several new managerial insights on how firms could optimize their profits when faced with strategic consumers.

Key words: strategic consumer behavior, rational expectations equilibrium, inventory-dependent salvage value, consumer heterogeneity