This research analyzes how consumers' bidding costs and expectations about the threshold price impact a Name-Your-Own-Price (NYOP) retailer. We find that an NYOP retailer's profit may increase if consumers learn the product's true price threshold distribution. Inaccurate expectations can be...

This paper defines a unique type of product or service offering, termed , and analyzes a novel selling strategy, termed (PS). A probabilistic good is not a concrete product or service but an offer involving a probability of getting any one of a set of multiple distinct items. Under the...

Although advance selling and probabilistic selling differ in both motivation and implementation, we argue that they share a common characteristic--both offer consumers a choice involving buyer uncertainty. We develop a formal model to examine the general economics of purchase options that...

This paper presents an initial examination of an emerging business model, the Name-Your-Own-Price (NYOP) channel, as popularized by priceline.com. Focusing on how to optimally structure such market interactions, I ask whether it is more profitable to restrict individuals to a single bid, as is...