Pricing of fresh food enterprises in different market structures

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the pricing policies of substitutable fresh food products under different market structures. By considering the quality changes of fresh products over time, these paper models a situation wherein substitutable fresh products are sold and the seller makes decisions regarding the times to markdown prices and offer discount rates. Furthermore, the standard and two-level evolution algorithms are adopted to solve numerical cases that involve different market structures. Based on the profit function of each product, the optimal solutions for different market structures – monopoly and monopolistic competition – are derived.

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