Sustainable inventory, pricing, and marketing strategies for imperfect quality perishable items with inspection errors and advertisement-, expiration date- and price-dependent demand under carbon emissions policies

The demand for perishable products is affected by freshness levels, advertising efforts and selling prices, among other factors. By virtue of being consumed mostly by humans, quality control is also an important factor in perishable production systems. Moreover, inventory management related operations in such production systems release sizeable quantities of carbon emissions that are often regulated by carbon policies. To study the interactions of all these attributes in the context of a perishable inventory system, this paper proposes four sustainable inventory models for a perishable product with imperfect quality, inspection errors and whose demand depends on the advertising frequency, expiration date and selling price. The emissions released are assumed to be governed by carbon tax and carbon cap policies. Two of the models are developed under the assumption that the quality inspection process is 100% effective while the other two models consider the possibility of committing inspection errors, and additionally, for each pair of models, one is developed under a carbon tax policy and the other under a carbon cap policy. All the models are aimed at jointly optimising the perishable product’s lot-size, advertising frequency and selling price. The numerical results show that the presence of inspection errors leads to 28% and 23% lower profits under carbon tax and cap policies, respectively. Moreover, profit can be maximised by either stocking perishable products with longer shelf lives or targeting customers that engage with advertising mediums and those that are not price-conscious, while emissions can be minimised via the enforcement of carbon policies.