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A study of the price discounts granted by Morton Salt Company and other producers of table salt in the U.S. on their sales of table salt to grocery wholesalers and retailers. The discounts were found to be illegal under the Robinson-Patman Act by the Federal Trade Commission and the Supreme Court. The Commission and the Court believed that the discounts were unjustified price concessions granted to “large” buyers, consistent with the concerns of the Robinson-Patman Act. However, the evidence indicates that the most common discount – the “carload discount” – was received by virtually all buyers, regardless of the buyer’s size; the other discounts – “annual volume” discounts – though received primarily by “large” buyers, were likely cost based. The history of the discounts and likely reasons why they were granted are explored in detail.

Addresses a number of issues relating to determining whether products should be ordered independently and therefore shipped as a single‐product order, or co‐ordinated and shipped as a group, or multiproduct, order from a single source. Factors which might influence the decision include the level or volume of demand, the distribution of demand across products, the weight of items and the attractiveness of the quantity discount offered. Uses an optimal inventory‐theoretic model, that incorporates transport weight breaks and quantity discounts, to assess when product orders should be combined and what products should be ordered separately. The effects of these decisions on the order interval, the number of order groupings, the proportion of items ordered independently, the proportion of attractive discounts forgone in favour of consolidation, and the relative cost savings, are examined using an extensive set of simulated data that are based on a firm in the automobile industry supply chain.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how customers’ self-control affects their purchase decisions and to discuss the pricing decisions of the retailer under different forms of contract.

The authors use the literature on hyperbolic discounting to model customers’ self-control problems. In this framework, the authors examine how the customers’ self-control affects the optimal pricing decision and the selection of the optimal contract form when there is a supplier and a retailer in the supply chain.

The study’s results show that when wholesale price contract is compared with buyback contract, buyback contract is better when customers’ self-control is weak; when quantity-discount contract is compared with wholesale price contract and buyback contract, although quantity discount can encourage customers to purchase more units of products, but both wholesale price contract and buyback contract can be better than quantity-discount contract in some cases. Additionally, the authors demonstrate that revenue sharing contract can increase the supply chain’s profit. The authors also find that sometimes customers’ preplan will lead to the result that the supplier produces more unhealthy products.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to analyze the decision-making of the retailer by developing an analytical framework combining customer’s self-control and supply chain contract. These results have important implications for the supplier and the retailer that sell vice goods.

This paper aims to present a literature review on models developed for the economic order quantity (EOQ) problem with incremental and all-units discounts, extending the work of Benton and Park (1996) which covered the most significant literature, from 1963 to 1994, about EOQ with discounts and that has identified four open areas in this field of study. The modeling of lot size with discounts wishes to give good solutions for realistic situations, such as those concerning the discounts offered by suppliers, to rises in the demand.

The research was carried out in papers published from 1995 to 2013, and indexed in databases as Scopus and ISI Web of Science. The papers were compared through objective function, constraints, discounts, developed algorithms, allowance of shortages or multiproduct, demand pattern and buyer or buyer–supplier perspective.

Results indicate two areas that still remain untouched, and probably the main cause is due to mathematical complexities. The authors have also identified an increasing trend of works that compared just-in-time with the EOQ with quantity discounts policy and also an increasing number of works that solved this category of problems with algorithms.

The research does not cover materials published in working papers, monographs, thesis, conferences or journals that are not indexed in those databases.

This manuscript fills a gap in the study of EOQ with incremental discounts, as it highlights the leading edge advances in this field and the main differences among models. As a whole, the new trends about modeling EOQ problems with quantity discounts were discovered.

This paper aims to examine how the temporal distance can influence the effect of the scarcity message. To demonstrate this effect, the authors use the limited-quantity flash sales and compare two types of mixed promotion method comprising discount rate and limited quantity.

The results of the experiment reveal that consumers in the temporally distant condition have a relatively high-level construal of the limited-quantity flash sales and are more likely to value desirability (discount rate) over feasibility (limited quantity).

When the expected value is identical, consumers prefer limited-quantity flash sales with smaller limited quantity but higher discount rates. However, consumers in the temporally near condition have a relatively low-level construal of the limited-quantity flash sales and are more likely to value feasibility (limited quantity) over desirability (discount rate).

When the expected value is identical, consumers prefer limited-quantity flash sales with lower discount rates but larger limited quantity.

The inventory management system of a discount retail store was examined. A just‐in‐time inventory management model and a quantity discount model were used to determine the appropriateness of each model for the retail outlet. Based on the calculations performed, it was determined that utilizing a retail just‐in‐time (JIT) policy is unrealistic. Customer demands constantly change, and shortages due to stock‐outs can cause huge losses in profits, especially when customers are lost to competitors. Additionally, the quantity discount model provides the lowest total cost for a retail outlet. Not only are the prices cheaper when inventory is bought in large quantities, but shortages or stock‐outs are rare. The optimal solution for a retail store is implementing the quantity discount method.

This study aims to examine whether adding a quantity scarcity message to a monetary discount helps to improve consumers’ offer-related perceptions and intentions, and how the effectiveness of that message compares with adding time restriction to the offer.

Two experiments, where participants evaluated retail ads and responded to relevant measures, were conducted in two country markets.

Adding either a quantity scarcity message or time restriction to a monetary discount increases the potency of a retail offer. Further, when an offer ad emphasizes product and price-related cues in a balanced manner, time restriction results in more favorable consumer perceptions than scarcity. However, this difference in the messages’ efficacy disappears when the offer strongly emphasizes price-related cues.

The US market sample is more homogeneous than the Indian one. Discounts were presented in terms of advertised reference prices; further research with other discount formats is desirable.

Understanding the relative efficacy of quantity scarcity message and time restriction in discounted retail offers can give managers flexibility in the use of these tools.

This paper addresses scholars’ call for theory-grounded research that provides guidance to retailers on the use of sales promotional tools.

Group buying (GB) is a shopping strategy through which customers obtain volume discounts on the products they purchase, whereas retailers obtain quick turnover. In the scenario of GB, the optimal discount strategy is a key issue because it affects the profit of sellers. Previous research has focused on exploring the price discount and order quantity with a fixed selling price of the product assuming that customer demand is uncertain (but follows a known distribution). This study aims to look at the same problem but goes further to examine the case where not only customer demand is certain but also the demand distribution is unknown.

In this study, optimal price discount and order quantity of a GB problem cast as a price-setting newsvendor problem were obtained assuming that the distribution of customer demand is unknown. The price–demand relationship is considered in addition form and product form, respectively. The bootstrap sampling technique is used to develop a solution procedure for the problem. To validate the usefulness of the proposed method, a simulated comparison of the proposed model and the existing one was conducted. The effects of sample size, demand form and parameters of the demand form on the performance of the proposed model are presented and discussed.

It is revealed from the numerical results that the proposed model is appropriate to the problem at hand, and it becomes more effective as sample size increases. Because the two forms of demand indicate restrictive assumptions about the effect of price on the variance of demand, it is found that the proposed model seems to be more suitable for addition form of demand.

This study contributes to the growing literature on GB models by developing a bootstrap-based newsvendor model to determine an optimal discount price and order quantity for a fixed-price GB website. This model can assist the sellers in making decisions on optimal discount price and order quantity without knowing the form of customer demand distribution.

The authors investigate the manufacturer's choice of discount schemes in a supply chain with competing retailers.

Using a game-theoretic model, the authors build two discount frameworks and compare and analyze the effects of different discount schemes on the performance of supply chain members.

The authors find that the retail price (market demand) in the quantity discount scheme is always higher (lower) than that in the market share discount scheme. The authors also find that the retailers' preference for discount schemes is antithetical to the manufacturer's preference in most cases. However, under certain conditions, there will be a win-win situation where Pareto-optimization occurs between the manufacturer and retailers when they choose the same discount scheme.

On the one hand, the authors assume that the two retailers are symmetrical in market size and operation efficiency. It would be interesting to study the effect of different discount schemes on retailers when the retailers have different market sizes or operating efficiency. On the other hand, the authors study the manufacturer's choice of discount schemes in a supply chain with one common manufacturer and two competing retailers. However, in practice, there exist other supply chain structures. Future research can examine the problem of choices of discount schemes in other different supply chain structures.

This paper help retailers and manufacturers to choose the best discount schemes.

This paper suggests that a high discount scale is not always beneficial (detrimental) to retailers (the manufacture).

The authors build two discount schemes (the quantity and the market share) in a supply chain consisting of one manufacturer and two retailers, and the authors focus on the effects of different discount schemes on the competition between two retailers. By comparing the two discount schemes, the authors study which discount scheme is the better choice for the manufacturer when facing competing retailers.

This paper aims to present a set of five models for the economic order quantity problem. Four models solve problems for a single product: incremental discounts with or without backorders and all-unit discounts with or without backorders, and the last model solves problems for the multiproduct case.

A basic integer non-linear model with binary variables is presented, and its flexible structure allows for all five models to be utilised with minor modifications for adaptation to individual situations. The multiproduct model takes into consideration the work of Chopra and Meindl (2012), who studied two types of product aggregations: full and adaptive. To find optimal or near-optimal solutions for the multiproduct case, the authors propose a simulated annealing metaheuristic application. Numerical examples are presented to improve the comprehension of each model, and the authors also present the efficiency of the simulated annealing algorithm through an example that aggregates 50 products, each one with different discount schemes and some allowing backorders.

Our model proved to be efficient at finding optimal or near optimal solutions even when confronted with mathematical complexities such as the allowance of backorders and incremental discounts.

Finally our model can process a mix of products with different discount schemes at the same time, and the simulated annealing metaheuristics could find optimal or near optimal solutions with very few iterations.