Integration of dynamic pricing and overselling with opportunistic cancellation

Abstract   We extend the concept of dynamic pricing by integrating it with “overselling with opportunistic cancellation” option, within the framework of dynamic policy. Under this strategy, to sell a stock of perishable product (or capacity) two prices are offered to customers at any given time period. Customers are categorized as high-paying and low-paying ones. The seller deliberately oversells its capacity if high paying customers show up, even when the capacity is already fully booked by low-paying customers. In that case, the sale to some low-paying customers is canceled, although an appropriate compensation must be provided. A dynamic programming approach is applied to formulate and solve this problem. We develop two models for continuous and periodic pricing, depending on the frequency of price changing. The advantage of this system over dynamic pricing model is investigated through some numerical examples. We also study some structural properties of the optimal policies.