Firms often have to make their production decisions under conditions of demand uncertainty. This is especially true for product categories such as automobiles and technology goods where the lead time needed for manufacturing forces firms to make production decisions well in advance of the...

We consider two broad categories of incentives by which a manufacturer can motivate its retailers to provide high customer satisfaction: (1) manufacturer assistance that reduces the retailer's cost of providing customer satisfaction (CS assistance); and (2) customer satisfaction index (CSI)...

Although negotiating over prices with sellers is common in many markets such as automobiles, furniture, services, consumer electronics, etc., it is not clear how a haggling price policy can help a firm gain a strategic advantage or whether it is even sustainable in a competitive market. In this...

We study the signalling strategy of a principal who is privately informed about its high demand potential to an uninformed risk-neutral agent. We analyze the model in the context of a contract between a franchisor and a franchisee. We examine the distortions of a two-part pricing scheme...

Digital rights management (DRM) is an important yet controversial issue in the information goods markets. Although DRM is supposed to help copyright owners by protecting digital content from illegal copying or distribution, it is controversial because DRM imposes restrictions on even legal...