The value of delayed differentiation (also known as postponement) for a monopolist has been extensively studied in the operations literature. We analyze the case of (imperfectly) competitive markets with demand uncertainty, wherein the choice of supply chain configuration (i.e., early or delayed...

The importance of material flow management for a profit-maximizing firm has been well articulated in the supply chain literature. We demonstrate in our analytical model that a firm must also actively manage information flows within the supply chain, which translates to controlling what it knows,...

Web-based group-buying mechanisms are being widely used for both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions. We survey currently operational online group-buying markets, and then study this phenomenon using analytical models. We build on the literatures in information...

In many services, the quality or value provided by the service increases with the time the service provider spends with the customer. However, longer service times also result in longer waits for customers. We term such services, in which the interaction between quality and speed is critical, as...

The bullwhip effect is the amplification of demand variability along a supply chain: a company bullwhips if it purchases from suppliers more variably than it sells to customers. Such bullwhips (amplifications of demand variability) can lead to mismatches between demand and production and hence...

This paper studies an organizational architecture that I call information-age architecture. I define a measure of organizational IQ and test whether it is related to financial and market success using data from the fast-moving information technology industry. Higher organizational IQ is...

We study a market with customers who have heterogeneous preferences for product attributes. We consider two types of firms that compete on price and product variety: A traditional firm, which chooses a limited set of product configurations, and a customizing firm, which can produce any...

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This paper studies time-based competition in imperfect securities markets, linking IT investment decisions, information processing delays, and trading strategies. At the IT investment stage, traders trade off the cost of IT against their anticipated trading profits. At the trading stage, each...

This paper studies optimal pricing and capacity decisions for a service facility in an environment where users' delay cost is important. The model assumes a general nonlinear delay cost structure and incorporates the tradeoff between the delay cost and capacity cost. We find necessary and...