A Partial Backlogging Inventory Model for Deteriorating Items with Fluctuating Selling Price and Purchasing Cost

In today’s competitive markets, selling price and purchasing cost are usually fluctuating with economic conditions. Both selling price and purchasing cost are vital to the profitability of a firm. Therefore, in this paper, I extend the inventory model introduced by Teng and Yang (2004) to allow for not only the selling price but also the purchasing cost to change from one replenishment cycle to another during a finite time horizon. The objective is to find the optimal replenishment schedule and pricing policy to obtain the profit as maximum as possible. The conditions that lead to a maximizing solution guarantee that the existence, uniqueness, and global optimality are proposed. An efficient solution procedure and some theoretical results are presented. Finally, numerical examples for illustration and sensitivity analysis for managerial decision making are also performed. 1. Introduction In today’s time-based competitive market, the unit selling price of product may increase significantly while its demand increases such as fashionable or valuable goods. On the other hand, the selling prices of items may drop dramatically throughout their life cycles due to advances in technology, competition, and so forth. Thus, the selling price is fluctuating. From the other aspect, some products of the purchasing cost decreases as the demand increases such as the unit cost of a high-tech product declines significantly over its short product life cycle. For example, the cost of a personal computer drops constantly as shown in Lee et al. [1]. Furthermore, the purchasing cost as a percentage of sales is often substantial, which had been mentioned in Heizer and Render [2]. Therefore, from an integrated logistics management perspective, taking the varying selling price and purchasing cost into account is essential. Moreover, in reality, for fashionable commodities and high-tech products with short life cycles, the backorder rate is diminishing with the length of waiting time. Customers who experience stock-out will be less likely to buy again from the suppliers, they may turn to another store to purchase the goods. The sales for the product may decline due to the introduction of more competitive product or the change in consumers’ preferences. The longer the waiting time, the lower the backlogging rate is. This leads to a larger fraction of lost sales and a less profit. As a result, take the factor of partial backlogging into account is necessary. Abad [3] proposed an optimal pricing and lot-sizing policy under the conditions of perishability and partial backordering.