Optimal pricing under uncertain product lifetime conditions and simulation study

  • Published : 1996.10.01

Abstract

Optimal pricing research in general has been focused on profit maximizing strategy under the given product life-time T. Here we have tried to study the effect of uncertain product life-time on dynamic optimal pricing strategy. In reality, the life-time of product is more likely to be uncertain and not known as well. In terms of approximating the model to the concerned reality, so-called model validity, it seems to be more desirable to consider the uncertainty of product life-time into the optimal pricing strategy model, For this purpose, we tried two different approaches. One is to consider diverse product life-time probability functions under fixed life-time T. In this case, we might have the same product life-time as the previous study, but the process could be different in the expectation of product's discontinuity. The other is that life-time itself is not determined and thus it is the situation in which we can only decide optimal price on incremental basis. The former is the situation in which although we got some strong guess on life-time of a certain product, the pattern of expected life-time probability could be different. The question is what could be optimal pricing strategies on such different product life-time situations. But since in the latter, we don't assume any idea on the life-time of product. proper optimal pricing could be derived only from the past prices and diffusion information. While the latter seems to be safer in the aspect of model assumption, the former could be more realistic because we might have more or less a prior knowledge on the product life-time itself.

Keywords