Abstract:

The rapid development of technology and the diversification of consumer demand have inspired manufacturers to speed up the pace of technological innovation， and the phenomenon of product rollover is more frequent. Due to the existence of strategic consumers， there is a delay effect and competition effect between two successive-generation products， which makes the product pricing and rollover strategy of manufacturers more complicated， ignoring strategic consumers will lead to loss of profits in the supply chain.Considering a stationary flow of heterogeneous strategic consumers that arrive over time， a monopoly firm’s rollover strategy and optimal pricing are studied. In this paper， the strategic consumers’ utility function is constructed to distinguish the purchase range of new and old products， and a multi-stage dynamic game model and the revenue rate function are built to determine the evolution trajectory of the equilibrium pricing under the two rollover strategies. The impact of strategic consumers’ waiting cost coefficient， old product’s discount pricing on key selling points and profit through simulation is explored.The research indicates that the dual rollover strategy can improve market share， and single rollover strategy is more advantageous in profit. The dual rollover strategy exacerbates competition between the old and new products， which causes the equilibrium price is lower than that of single rollover strategy. The revenue rate shows periodic characteristics in the whole sales period， and the single rollover strategy can achieve higher revenue rate. Strategic consumers’ wait time cost and the old product’s discount pricing not only affect the profits of the monopoly firm， but also have important impact on the sales section of the two rollover strategies. Moreover， under the dual rollover strategy， when the price of the old product reaches the threshold in the second stage， the strategic consumers will not choose to wait for the old product.Based on the above analyses， it is proposed that manufacturers need to strengthen brand building and advertising， improve the innovation level of new products， and further promote strategic consumers to buy in advance. Especially in the dual rollover mode， manufacturers need to take into account the profit and the inventory of new and old products， so as to set a reasonable price. It is expected that this research can provide some meaningful reference for manufacturers to alleviate strategic consumer behavior.

Key words: strategic consumer, product rollover strategy, optimal pricing, waiting time, revenue rate function