IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/crs/wpaper/2012-23.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Intertemporal Pricing with Unobserved Consumer Arrival Times

Author

Listed:
  • Philippe Choné

    (CREST)

  • Romain De Nijs

    (CREST & UC Berkeley)

  • Lionel Wilner

    (CREST-INSEE 104 rue de la Convention 75015 Paris Tél : 06 22 82 56 26)

Abstract

We examine optimal selling mechanisms with ex-ante commitment for a nondurable good when the seller does not observe the times at which strategic consumers arrive on the market and how much they are willing to pay for the good. Assuming consumer risk neutrality, we demonstrate in this two-dimensional screening problem that stochastic mechanisms are suboptimal. In practice, this means that quantity rationing and behavior-based price discrimination do not improve the profit compared to a simple time-dependent price schedule. We explain how the optimal profit may be achieved with a first-come first-served policy

Suggested Citation

  • Philippe Choné & Romain De Nijs & Lionel Wilner, 2012. "Intertemporal Pricing with Unobserved Consumer Arrival Times," Working Papers 2012-23, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    • Handle: RePEc:crs:wpaper:2012-23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://crest.science/RePEc/wpstorage/2012-23.pdf
    File Function: Crest working paper version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pascal Courty & Li Hao, 2000. "Sequential Screening," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 67(4), pages 697-717.
    2. Strausz, Roland, 2006. "Deterministic versus stochastic mechanisms in principal-agent models," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 128(1), pages 306-314, May.
    3. Gauthier, Stéphane & Laroque, Guy, 2014. "On the value of randomization," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 493-507.
    4. Drew Fudenberg & Jean Tirole, 1991. "Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061414, April.
    5. Simon Board, 2008. "Durable-Goods Monopoly with Varying Demand," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(2), pages 391-413.
    6. Gale, Ian L & Holmes, Thomas J, 1993. "Advance-Purchase Discounts and Monopoly Allocation of Capacity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 135-146, March.
    7. Mark Armstrong & Jidong Zhou, 2010. "Exploding Offers and Buy-Now Discounts," EERI Research Paper Series EERI_RP_2010_44, Economics and Econometrics Research Institute (EERI), Brussels.
    8. Simon Board & Andrzej Skrzypacz, 2016. "Revenue Management with Forward-Looking Buyers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(4), pages 1046-1087.
    9. Volker Nocke & Martin Peitz, 2007. "A Theory of Clearance Sales," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(522), pages 964-990, July.
    10. Kalyan Talluri & Garrett van Ryzin, 2004. "Revenue Management Under a General Discrete Choice Model of Consumer Behavior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(1), pages 15-33, January.
    11. Marc Möller & Makoto Watanabe, 2010. "Advance Purchase Discounts Versus Clearance Sales," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(547), pages 1125-1148, September.
    12. Mussa, Michael & Rosen, Sherwin, 1978. "Monopoly and product quality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 301-317, August.
    13. Wilson, Charles A, 1988. "On the Optimal Pricing Policy of a Monopolist," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(1), pages 164-176, February.
    14. Nancy L. Stokey, 1979. "Intertemporal Price Discrimination," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 93(3), pages 355-371.
    15. Gershkov, Alex & Moldovanu, Benny, 2012. "Dynamic allocation and pricing: A mechanism design approach," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 283-286.
    16. Dana, James D, Jr, 2001. "Monopoly Price Dispersion under Demand Uncertainty," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 42(3), pages 649-670, August.
    17. Michael Landsberger & Isaac Meilijson, 1985. "Intertemporal Price Discrimination and Sales Strategy under Incomplete Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 16(3), pages 424-430, Autumn.
    18. Akan, Mustafa & Ata, Barış & Dana, James D., 2015. "Revenue management by sequential screening," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PB), pages 728-774.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899, September.
    2. Ata, Barış & Dana, James D., 2015. "Price discrimination on booking time," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 175-181.
    3. Emil Temnyalov, 2019. "Points mechanisms and rewards programs," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 436-457, June.
    4. Ellman, Matthew & Hurkens, Sjaak, 2019. "Optimal crowdfunding design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    5. Volker Nocke & Martin Peitz, 2003. "Monopoly Pricing under Demand Uncertainty: Final Sales versus Introductory ffers," PIER Working Paper Archive 03-002, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    6. Seongman Moon & Makoto Watanabe, 2011. "Refundability and Price: Empirical Analysis on the Airline Industry," Working Papers 1107, Nam Duck-Woo Economic Research Institute, Sogang University (Former Research Institute for Market Economy).
    7. Garrett, Daniel F., 2017. "Dynamic mechanism design: Dynamic arrivals and changing values," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 595-612.
    8. Negin Golrezaei & Hamid Nazerzadeh & Ramandeep Randhawa, 2020. "Dynamic Pricing for Heterogeneous Time-Sensitive Customers," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 22(3), pages 562-581, May.
    9. Tian Xia & Richard Sexton, 2010. "Brand or Variety Choices and Periodic Sales as Substitute Instruments for Monopoly Price Discrimination," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 36(4), pages 333-349, June.
    10. Nocke, Volker & Peitz, Martin & Rosar, Frank, 2011. "Advance-purchase discounts as a price discrimination device," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(1), pages 141-162, January.
    11. Bose, Subir, 2014. "Monopolistic screening and uninformed buyers," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 348-353.
    12. Vibhanshu Abhishek & Mustafa Dogan & Alexandre Jacquillat, 2021. "Strategic Timing and Dynamic Pricing for Online Resource Allocation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(8), pages 4880-4907, August.
    13. Alderighi, Marco & Gaggero, Alberto A. & Piga, Claudio A., 2022. "Hidden prices with fixed inventory: Evidence from the airline industry," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 42-61.
    14. Kevin R. Williams, 2022. "The Welfare Effects of Dynamic Pricing: Evidence From Airline Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(2), pages 831-858, March.
    15. Sun, Ching-jen, 2007. "Dynamic Price Discrimination and Quality Provision Based on Purchase History," MPRA Paper 9855, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Aug 2008.
    16. Kevin R. Williams, 2017. "Dynamic Airline Pricing and Seat Availability," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2103R, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised May 2020.
    17. Marco Sahm, 2020. "Advance-Purchase Financing of Projects with Few Buyers," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 57(4), pages 909-933, December.
    18. Mierendorff, Konrad, 2016. "Optimal dynamic mechanism design with deadlines," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 190-222.
    19. Artyom Shneyerov, 2014. "An optimal slow Dutch auction," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 57(3), pages 577-602, November.
    20. Akan, Mustafa & Ata, Barış & Dana, James D., 2015. "Revenue management by sequential screening," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PB), pages 728-774.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Intertemporal pricing; Strategic consumers; Arrival dates; Heterogeneous cohorts; two-dimensional screening;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D42 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Monopoly
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:crs:wpaper:2012-23. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Secretariat General (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/crestfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.