Firms in service and make-to-order manufacturing industries often quote lead times and prices to customers. We define uniform quotation mode (UQM) as the strategy where a firm offers a single lead time and price quotation, and differentiated quotation mode (DQM) is where a firm offers a menu of...

Retailers often face a newsvendor problem, i.e., they must order their inventory prior to a short selling period with uncertain demand. The uncertainty can be reduced by advance selling because not only are advance orders certain, but the remaining demand can be better forecasted. Consumers,...

Problem definition: In this e-commerce age, majority manufacturers sell products through online channels in addition to retail channels. This leads to dual channel competition and channel conflict. One popular operation in practice to reduce channel conflict is through increasing channel...

We develop a game-theoretic model to explore why retail clusters are so popular in developing economies and when governments should facilitate the formation of retail clusters to improve social welfare. First, we find two determinants of retailer clusters: valuation-cost ratio (consumers'...

This paper studies the impact of consumers' social learning from the reviews of early adopters of a new product. We consider a two-period setting with an introduction (penetration) period followed by the product maturing period. Early buyers make purchase decisions in the introduction period...

Microtasking, or dividing a task into small chunks, is often suggested for self-improvement programs with delayed benefits that people find challenging to follow through. It is, however, unclear when microtasking can help, and if so, how to design the microtasks taking the pricing of the program...

In the mobile video games industry, in-app purchases are a major source of revenue. A common in-app purchase is for additional "moves" or "time" in puzzle games. We call these in-app purchases "bonus actions". In some games, bonus actions can only be purchased in advance of attempting a level of...

Microtransactions for functional items bring mixed results for game publishers. It is not clear why microtransactions are successful with FIFA 20 and Clash of Clans, but not with Star Wars Battle Front II. The effects of players' fairness concerns on a publisher's strategy are investigated. A...

This paper investigates an emerging monetization mechanism for app developers – reward advertising. With reward ads, consumers have an option to view ads in exchange for a reward such as premium content. We investigate when and how an app developer should adopt reward ads as a mechanism for...

With the development of the Internet and E-commerce, retailers often offer pre-orders for new to-be-released products. To encourage pre-orders, retailers such as Amazon offer pre-order price guarantee (PG). That is, if the product price drops before or on the release date, pre-order consumers...