关键词: 联合补货与定价模型, 顾客退货, 固定成本, 随机动态规划, 最优策略

Abstract: To attract more customers, many e-commerce retailers allow their customers return goods within the specified time, which significantly reduces their profits. Meanwhile, the replenishment of goods incurs not only the variable cost depending on the replenishment quantity, but also the fixed cost independent of the replenishment quantity. Based on this, to maximize the e-commerce retailer's profit, a joint replenishment and pricing model with customer returns and fixed costs is built, where the quantity of returns is proportional to satisfied demand. In the general demand case, the optimal policy is partially characterized for the multi-period problem. And in the special demand case,the optimal policy isan(s,S,p)policy for the single-period problem, anda strong characterization of the optimal policy is made for the multi-period problem. Based on the characterization, a heuristic policy is proposed. Numerical results show that the heuristic is close to optimal; andwhen the initial inventory level is low/high enough, both the optimal replenishment level andprice vary monotonically with the fixed cost and return rate.

Key words: joint replenishment and pricingmodel, customer returns, fixed costs, stochastic dynamic programming, optimalpolicy