Firms in service and make-to-order manufacturing industries often quote lead times and prices to customers. We define uniform quotation mode (UQM) as the strategy where a firm offers a single lead time and price quotation, and differentiated quotation mode (DQM) is where a firm offers a menu of...

Retailers often face a newsvendor problem, i.e., they must order their inventory prior to a short selling period with uncertain demand. The uncertainty can be reduced by advance selling because not only are advance orders certain, but the remaining demand can be better forecasted. Consumers,...

Advance selling through pre-orders is a strategy to transfer inventory risk from a retailer to consumers. A newsvendor retailer can have three strategies to choose from: no advance selling allowed (NAS), moderate advance selling with a moderate discount for pre-orders (MAS), and deep advance...

Problem definition: In this e-commerce age, majority manufacturers sell products through online channels in addition to retail channels. This leads to dual channel competition and channel conflict. One popular operation in practice to reduce channel conflict is through increasing channel...

We develop a game-theoretic model to explore why retail clusters are so popular in developing economies and when governments should facilitate the formation of retail clusters to improve social welfare. First, we find two determinants of retailer clusters: valuation-cost ratio (consumers'...

This paper studies the impact of consumers' social learning from the reviews of early adopters of a new product. We consider a two-period setting with an introduction (penetration) period followed by the product maturing period. Early buyers make purchase decisions in the introduction period...

In the mobile video games industry, in-app purchases are a major source of revenue. A common in-app purchase is for additional "moves" or "time" in puzzle games. We call these in-app purchases "bonus actions". In some games, bonus actions can only be purchased in advance of attempting a level of...

This paper investigates an emerging monetization mechanism for app developers – reward advertising. With reward ads, consumers have an option to view ads in exchange for a reward such as premium content. We investigate when and how an app developer should adopt reward ads as a mechanism for...

Mobile carriers used to enforce service contracts on consumers. However, recently major mobile carriers have eliminated contracts. We investigate carriers' contract and marketing strategies. We identify Expectation-Reality Discrepancy (ERD) as a key determinant. A carrier's ERD is defined as...