Price sensitive demand with random sales price – a newsboy problem

Abstract

Up to now, many newsboy problems have been considered in the stochastic inventory literature. Some assume that stochastic demand is independent of selling price (p) and others consider the demand as a function of stochastic shock factor and deterministic sales price. This article introduces a price-dependent demand with stochastic selling price into the classical Newsboy problem. The proposed model analyses the expected average profit for a general distribution function of p and obtains an optimal order size. Finally, the model is discussed for various appropriate distribution functions of p and illustrated with numerical examples.

Keywords:

• price-dependent demand
• inventory
• random selling price

Acknowledgement

The author wishes to express his gratitude to editors and anonymous referees for their constructive comments and suggestions to enhance the clarity of the paper.