Optimal marketing policy for managing new generation products in the presence of forward-looking customers by considering product diffusion

Purpose The effect of customers’ forward-looking behavior on firms’ profit has been highlighted by many researchers and practitioners. This study aims to develop a mathematical model for new generation products to analyze the optimal pricing and advertising policies in the presence of homogeneous forward-looking customers. A firm that produces and sells a new generation product was considered. This firm aimed to determine the optimal pricing and advertising expenditure by maximizing the total profit. Design/methodology/approach The demand was presented as a diffusion model inspired by the Bass diffusion model. This paper used Pontryagin’s maximum principle to analyze the proposed model. The presented model was implemented in some numerical examples by proposing a heuristic solution method. Numerical examples confirmed the theoretical results. Findings This paper found a threshold on the optimal advertising policy depends on customers’ forward-looking behavior, advertising coefficient (both direct and word-of-mouth advertising) and discount rate. The funding showed that the optimal pricing path of the first generation was monotonically decreasing or increasing and, then, decreasing. Results revealed that, by increasing the customers’ forward-looking behavior, the firm should reduce the price and advertising expenditure. Also, the price was shown to be negatively affected by the discount rate and word-of-mouth advertising. The profitability will improve if the firm spends more budget on advertising by increasing the discount rate and advertising effectiveness. Further, when the word-of-mouth advertising effect is high, the firm should increase the advertising expenditure first and, then, decrease it. Originality/value Nowadays, forward-looking customers’ anticipation for releasing a new generation can harm the firms’ profit. In this regard, this research analyzed optimal pricing and advertising policies for a new generation product in a market populated by homogeneous forward-looking customers. To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study that investigated these two marketing policies jointly in the presence of forward-looking customers.