A growing number of firms are strategically utilizing IT and the Internet to provide online services to consumers who buy their products. Online services differ from traditional services, such as maintenance services, because they often promote interactivity among the firm’s customers and...

In this study, we model firms that sell a product and a complementary online service, where only the latter displays positive network effects. That is, the value each consumer derives from the service increases with the total number of consumers that subscribe to the service. In addition, the...

Many firms in the business-to-consumer market sell identical products online using auctions and posted prices at the same time. In this paper, we develop and analyze a model of the key trade-offs sellers face in such a dual-channel setting built around the optimal choice of three design...

This paper studies outsourcing decisions for a two-level service process in which the first level serves as a gatekeeper for a second level of experts. The objective of the system operator (the client) is to minimize the sum of staffing costs, customer waiting costs, and mistreatment costs due...

Two important defensive mechanisms available to governments combating terrorism are warnings and the deployment of physical resources. Warnings are relatively inexpensive to issue but their effectiveness suffers from false alarms. Physical deployments of trained security personnel can directly...

Firms increasingly use contingent labor to flexibly respond to demand in many environments. Labor supply agencies are growing to fill this need. As a result, firms and agencies are engaging in long-term contracts for labor supply. We develop mathematical models of the interaction between firms...