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Chinese Journal of Management Science ›› 2019, Vol. 27 ›› Issue (1): 99-109.doi: 10.16381/j.cnki.issn1003-207x.2019.01.010

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Dynamic Pricing Strategy for Perishable Food Considering Donation Behavior

HU Han-li, CAO Yu, LI Qing-song   

  1. School of Business, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
  • Received:2017-11-10 Revised:2018-07-02 Online:2019-01-20 Published:2019-03-25

Abstract: Waste caused by inappropriate quality control and excessive inventories is a major challenge for perishable food management. The influence of donation behavior on the price decision of food companies is studied and multiple pricing strategies are considered, including single pricing strategy, twice pricing strategy and multi-level discount pricing strategy, thus the impacts of different pricing strategies on corporate profits are compared. Through numerical analysis, the result shows that:(i) The donation behavior can enhance the company's income and achieve better effects under the multi-level discount pricing strategy. However, the less discount times, the better the single pricing strategy for the company considering the donation. (ii) The initial quality, deterioration rate, discounting time point, donating time point and the tax return ratio of food are important factors affecting the pricing policy. If the quality discrepancy is larger, the profit of the company will decrease under the multi-level discount policy, while there appears an ascending trend when the donation is considered. When the deterioration rate is higher, the profit will be decreased under the single pricing strategy considering donation, but it will not affect much under the multi-level discount pricing strategy. When the discount time is closer to the donation time point, the company gains more profit under the multi-level discount pricing strategy considering donation; and when the donation time point is closer to the shelf life, the price strategy considering donation behavior will be superior to that without considering donation. In addition, the study also shows that the increase of the tax return ratio is not necessarily conducive to the pricing strategy under donation. (iii) The discount time has a significant impact on the profit of the company. It is found that the initial pricing and the profit of the company with donation considered is higher than those without consideration.

Key words: food waste, donation behavior, dynamic pricing, discount strategy

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