Supervisor

The thesis deals with pricing strategies for multichannel retailers, espe-cially traditional stores which additionally manage an online shop. The problem of integrating two sales channels and applying a well-suited pricing strategy is still an emergent question. This work develops a stochastic model to represent consumer behavior on pricing. On the one hand the model contains two probability functions which render consumers ’ reservation prices for each individual channel. On the other hand the stochastic model is based on numerous distributions which rep-resent switching probabilities from and to each separate channel. The various distribution functions will be estimated from the results of a sur-vey. To highlight differences of pricing strategies due to several product categories a cross comparisons of books, clothes and digital cameras will be presented. The results show that there are differences in multichannel pricing of the various products. These inequalities stem from consumers ’ perceptions of the sales channels. For each product a separate sales channel is pre-ferred by consumers. Therefore, one channel exhibits some advantage versus the alternative channels. This advantage is reflected in different pricing strategies. Further appropriate marketing strategies could help a firm to counter discounting by its competitors. So firms should keep an eye on the reservation price structure of its consumers as well as their demanded marketing activities