Treating Symmetric Buyers Asymmetrically

Abstract

We investigate a finite-horizon dynamic pricing problem of a seller under limited commitment. Even when the buyers are ex-ante symmetric to the seller, the seller can charge different prices to different buyers. We show that under the class of posted-price mechanisms this asymmetric treatment of symmetric buyers strictly revenue-dominates symmetric treatment. The seller im- plements this by using a priority-based deterministic tie-breaking rule instead of using a random tie-breaking rule. The effect of asymmetric treatment on revenue increment increases monotonically as we increase the time horizon of the game.