Optimal pre-sale policy for deteriorating items

Pre-sale policy is a frequently-used sales approach for deteriorating products, e.g, fruits, vegetables, seafood, etc. In this paper, we consider an EOQ inventory model under pre-sale policy for deteriorating products, in which the demand of pre-sale period depends on price and pre-sale horizon, and the demand of spot-sale period depends on the price and stock level. Optimal pricing decisions and economic order quantity are also provided. We compare pre-sale model with a benchmark inventory model in which all the products are sold in spot-sale period. Theoretical results are derived to show the existence and uniqueness of the optimal solution. Numerical experiments are carried out to to illustrate the theoretical results. And sensitivity analysis is conducted to identify conditions under which the pre-sale policy is better off than the spot-sale only policy.