Combined Sales Effort and Inventory Control under Demand Uncertainty

Weili Xue, Xiaolin Xu and Ruxian Wang

Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society, 2013, vol. 2013, 1-8

Abstract:

We study the joint inventory and sales effort management problems of a retailer in a broad context and investigate the optimal policies for a single item, periodic-review system. In each period, the demand is uncertain depending on the sales effort level exerted by the retailer, which incurs an associated cost. The retailer’s objective is to find a joint optimal inventory replenishment and sales effort policy to maximize the discounted profit over a finite horizon. We first consider a basic setting with zero setup cost and no batch ordering, under which the base stock list sales effort policy is optimal. Two extensions are then investigated: (1) the case with nonzero setup cost, under which we show that policy is optimal; and (2) the case with batch ordering, under which we prove the optimality of the policy. Finally, we conduct numerical studies to provide additional managerial insights.

Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hin:jnddns:984513

DOI: 10.1155/2013/984513

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