Firms sometimes nurture long lines, rather than raising prices to eliminate waiting times. We justify this practice by considering the informational role of a queue in a setting in which a firm can also adjust its price to signal its quality to uninformed consumers. When the proportion of...

We examine the value of price commitment in a nonprofit organization using individual level purchases over a series of concert performances. To decide on a pricing policy, the performing arts organization must be able to accurately measure when each ticket will be sold and what type of audience...

We study how rational customers choose between two congested service facilities with finite buffer space and unknown service value when waiting is expensive. Customers observe an imperfect private signal indicating which service facility may provide more service value, as well as the queue...

Traditional advertising, such as TV and print advertising, primarily builds awareness of a firm's product among consumers. On the other hand, sponsored search advertising can target consumers in a later stage of the purchase process because they self-identify themselves by searching for a...

We study how a consumer optimally allocates attention to favorable and unfavorable information related to a product before purchasing it, when information processing is costly. We find that attention allocation depends on the consumer's prior belief about whether the product matches her needs or...

We consider the compensation design problem of a firm that hires a salesperson to exert effort to increase demand. We assume both demand and supply to be uncertain, with sales being the smaller of demand and supply, and assume that if demand exceeds supply then unmet demand is unobservable...