Pricing in Dynamic Marketing: The Cases of Piece-Wise Constant Sale and Retail Discounts

摘要

We consider a stylized distribution channel, where a manufacturer sells a single kind of good to a retailer. In classical setting, the profit of manufacturer is quadratic w.r.t. wholesales discount, while the profit of retailer is quadratic w.r.t. retail discount (pass-through). Thus, the wholesale prices and the retail prices are continuous. These results are elegant mathematically but not adequate economically. Therefore, we assume that wholesale discount and retail discounts are piece-wise constant. We show the strict concavity of retailer's profits w.r.t. retail discount levels. As for the manufacturer's profits w.r.t. wholesale discount levels, we show that strict concavity can be guaranteed only in the case when retail discount is constant and sufficiently large.