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...

Is demand uncertainty a devil? A conventional thought is that demand uncertainty hurts a seller's profit. However, we show that demand uncertainty could favor a seller if the pricing mechanism is designed properly. Specifically, we study the optimal pricing strategy in advance selling with both...

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...

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...

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,...

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...