Using a proprietary dataset provided by a major manufacturer of aircraft engines, we empirically investigate how product reliability is impacted by use of two different types of after-sales maintenance support contracts: time and material contracts (T&MC) and performance-based contracts (PBC)....

Each year the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM) Society of INFORMS conducts a student paper competition. In Volume 2, Issue 2 of M&SOM, we published the extended abstracts of the 1999 winners in the hopes that this could become an annual event. Our hopes have become a...

We study the impact of service attributes (warranty length, after-sales service quality) on consumer demand in the U.S. automobile industry, examining the presence of complementarities/substitution between service attributes and product quality. Our results estimate a median willingness to pay...

Traditional sourcing arrangements for after-sales product support have centered around physical assets. Typically, a customer would pay the supplier of maintenance services in proportion to the resources used, such as spare parts, that are needed to maintain the product. In recent years, we have...