Technical Note - Price Trends in a Dynamic Pricing Model with Heterogeneous Customers: A Martingale Perspective

This note describes probabilistic properties of optimal price sample paths in a dynamic pricing model with a finite horizon and limited stock. We assume that customer arrivals follow a nonhomogeneous Poisson process. We show that if customers’ willingness-to-pay increases rapidly over time, then the optimal price process follows a submartingale, which implies an upward price trend. Alternatively, if customers’ willingness-to-pay decreases rapidly over time, then the optimal price process follows a supermartingale, which implies a downward price trend.