This paper examines a unique selling strategy, Group Buying, under which consumers enjoy a discounted group price if they are willing and able to achieve a required group size and coordinate their transaction time. We argue that Group Buying allows a seller to gain from facilitating consumer...

Product reviews by third parties are growing in popularity. This paper examines when and how a manufacturing firm should adapt its marketing strategies to such reviews. For example, should a firm receiving an unfavorable review reduce its price or adjust its advertising? Should a winning product...

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...

This paper explores the benefits of letting customers escape from prepurchased service contracts by offering refunds for cancellations. We show that such a policy creates opportunities for in a capacity-constrained service—i.e., collecting cancellation fees from advance buyers who cancel, and...

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...