Essays on Manufacturer Pricing Policies When Retailers and Consumers Stockpile

This dissertation is concerned with pricing issues facing manufacturers when retailers offer periodic discounts and customers stockpile in response. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the dissertation. In Chapter 2, we study a new Pareto-improving pricing scheme in which the manufacturer subsidizes the retailer's setup (transportation) cost in exchange for a (possibly) higher wholesale price. The retailer responds by choosing regular and discount prices and his order frequency to maximize his revenue less setup, purchasing and inventory holding costs, considering the customers' response.There are two customer segments that differ in their reservation prices and inventory holding costs. Customers make purchasing (including stockpiling) decisions to maximize their utility from consumption less purchasing and inventory holding costs. We characterize the retailer's optimal response to the manufacturer's pricing decisions and the consumers' response to the retailer's pricing schemes. We then show how to solve the manufacturer's decision problem in view of the downstream responses.In Chapter 3, we investigate the retailer's pass--through of manufacturer trade discounts. The manufacturer offers a fixed wholesale price and periodic trade discounts. The retailer optimizes his ordering plan (including stockpiling when a trade discount is offered) and the pattern of discounts to offer to customers, seeking to maximize revenue less setup, purchasing and inventory holding costs. Customers differ in their reservation prices, and in our model, we account for the adverse effect of retail discounts on consumers' reservation prices. For a given frequency and depth of the manufacturer's trade discount, we characterize the retailer's optimal discounting pattern for a given ordering schedule that spans the time between the manufacturer's trade discount offers. We solve for the retailer's jointly optimal ordering and discounting patterns by enumerating appropriate ordering schedules and optimizing the retailer's discount pattern for each.For the models in Chapters 2 and 3, we also perform associated numerical studies which, together with our analytical results, provide insight into how both manufacturers and retailers should make decisions in these problem settings, and circumstances in which various policiesare most effective in increasing profit.Chapter 4 concludes the dissertation with a summary of contributions and key findings