Abstract: According to the common phenomenon that the larger the inventory is, the more attractive the purchasing interest of consumers is, a procurement model of deteriorating items is established whose demand rate is inventory-dependent. Under the condition that the future price obeys arbitrary distribution, an online procurement strategy of deteriorating items is proposed under price uncertainty. The online algorithm and its competitive analysis method are used for modeling and analysis, and an effective online competitive procurement strategy is designed. The theoretical competitive ratio and the optimal economic procurement quantity are compared with the optimal offline strategy. Finally, through the numerical analysis, it is proved that the strategy has an excellent competitive performance ratio in reality and performs well under multiple price series, which shows that the strategy is robust and can provide valuable and reasonable decision-making suggestions for firms.

Key words: deteriorating items; inventory-dependent; online algorithm; competitive analysis