Many industries, including consumer electronics and telecommunications equipment, are characterized with short product life-cycles, constant technological innovations, rapid product introductions, and fast obsolescence. Firms in such industries need to make frequent design changes to incorporate...

Consumers often do not have complete information about the choices they face and therefore have to spend time and effort in acquiring information. Since information acquisition is costly, consumers have to trade-off the value of better information against its cost, and make their final choices...

Consumers often do not have complete information about the choices they face and therefore have to spend time and effort in acquiring information. Since information acquisition is costly, consumers have to trade-off the value of better information against its cost, and make their final choices...

In this paper, we focus on the uncertainty in consumer taste and study how a retailer can benefit from acquiring that taste information in the presence of competition between the retailer's store brand and a manufacturer's national brand. In this context, we also identify the optimal information...

In this paper, we study how a retailer can benefit from acquiring consumer taste information in the presence of competition between the retailers store brand (SB) and a manufacturers national brand (NB). In our model, there is ex-ante uncertainty about consumer preferences for distinct product...