Bartering: Price-Setting Newsvendor Problem with Barter Exchange

Abstract

Barter exchange is a system of swapping goods or services for other goods or services in a moneyless and direct manner. Barter has become an effective model of a circular economy because it reduces the consumption impact. Bartering maximizes the utility of assets and existing resources, and can unleash the unspent social, economic, and environmental value of underutilized assets. The present article analyzes the price-setting newsvendor problem with a barter exchange option. The retailer facing a stochastic price-dependent demand sells a product on the market and, additionally, needs another product for its own purposes. Therefore, first, the retailer trades the unsold product for the product it needs by means of barter, and next disposes of the unsold product at a discounted price at the end of the selling season. The retailer’s optimal order quantity and optimal price are derived assuming additive uncertainty in demand. This type of demand function has special characteristics, for example, the actual demand may attain negative values in times of economic uncertainty. The possibility of negative demand realizations is taken into consideration in the study. It proves that, in certain cases, the optimal solution belongs to the set of high barter prices which implies that the actual demand may be negative.