when a price is too high the quantity demanded will be less than the quantity supplied and the unsold quantity will increase unless the producer discounts the good or halts production discounting product is the most obvious way to deal with an oversupply and it is often the only way to clear unsold inventory especially if new product is on its way discounting does impact the bottom line of the seller and the producer may have to agree to share that pain with the seller 
in commodity markets oversupply is more of a market condition than a problem to be solved for commodities like oil natural gas precious metals meat and so on the production timeline requires a significant lead time and the prices are all market based if for example a number of large scale gas fields begin production at the same time there will be an oversupply of natural gas on the market leading to a lower price during periods of oversupply producers may actually lose money on the units they are selling the interesting thing about some types of commodity oversupply is that it is not a matter of unsold inventory but how much of the commodity can be stored and stockpiled before it eventually sells at whatever price the market will pay because production cannot be easily dialed up and down commodity producers depend on storage to help remove oversupply from the market while production cycles adjust to the lowered longer term demand of course if too much production is curtailed then the market will be undersupplied and more investment will flow into the production side this is one of the many reasons that many commodities have cyclical boom and bust pricing charts oversupply exampleoversupply and its impact on market equilibrium is best understood through an example suppose the price of a computer is 600 at a volume of 1 000 units but buyers demand only 300 units at that price in such a situation sellers are seeking to sell 700 more computers than buyers are willing to purchase the oversupply of 700 units puts the market for computers in disequilibrium since they re not able to sell all the computers for the desired price of 600 sellers consider a price reduction to make the product more attractive to buyers in response to the reduction in the price of the product consumers demand more computers and producers cut production eventually the market will achieve equilibrium price and quantity absent the introduction of other external factors this process may happen quickly for some goods when the prices and quantities that can be offered on the market are relatively flexible the longer it take prices and quantities to adjust on the market the longer the oversupply will persist when prices are sticky due to menu costs or other issues or when the government intervenes to set a price floor then an oversupply of a goods can persist or some time 