Optimal promotional effort policy in innovation diffusion model incorporating dynamic market size in segment specific market

Abstract

Due the increasing globalization of market and diverse consumer groups, market segmentation becomes an ever more important concept in current market scenario. After market segmentation, firms use the available promotional strategies to target market. In this paper, we present a model of determining the optimal dynamic promotional policies for a product in segmented market incorporating dynamic market size, where sales is assumed to be evolved through mass and differentiated promotion. Mass promotional effort is allowed in whole market with a fixed spectrum for each segment while differentiated promotion is targeted to each segment independently. The optimal promotional effort policy for each segment is obtained by applying maximum principle. Numerical illustrations are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed method and solution procedure by discretizing the optimal control model. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis of the discount rate parameter is carried out and presented.