Internet healthcare is becoming increasingly popular, which allows doctor–patient communication through messages, phone calls, or videos. Considering stochastic heterogeneous behaviors of patients and physicians (e.g. time-dependent no-shows, service times), it is critical to determine the...

When ordering food from online platforms, consumers often specify a tip that they will give to delivery workers, in hopes of receiving a fast delivery. Upon completion of the delivery, consumers may be able to reduce their tip if the platform implements an adjustable tipping policy (e.g., Uber...

We examine how blockchain technology can be used to combat counterfeiting. Specifically, we consider a market that consists of a manufacturer and a counterfeiter. The manufacturer can either use blockchain or signal through pricing to validate product authenticity. Customers have privacy...

In today's complex business environment, conflicting relationships among firms are becoming the norm. Firms can be supply chain partners, but at the same time, they can be competitors. Moreover, capacity is often limited, leaving the supplier facing the dilemma of whether to reserve capacity for...

Firms often must procure inventory/capacity before knowing what the demand will be, so there is a potential for a mismatch between inventory and demand, the “inventory risk.” We show that because of inventory risk, an increase in the number of competitors can lead to an increasing trend in...

We examine how different strategies can be used to protect global manufacturers from the prevalent issue of supplier copycatting in emerging markets. To do so, we develop a theoretical framework that also contributes to the recent practitioners’ debate about who should be responsible for...

We consider a manufacturer selling products to two competing retailers: a high-priority one and a low-priority one. The manufacturer has a capacity constraint and it allocates capacity according to the lexicographic mechanism. The capacity information is either public or private, which makes our...

Worried about unwittingly buying counterfeits, online customers often resort to “the wisdom of crowds” (e.g., product reviews) before purchasing. However, unethical sellers may game the review system through buying fake reviews. In this paper, we use a two-period game theoretical model to...