The promise of emerging and developing economies has created unprecedented interest from businesses in recent times. Yet, the reality of these economies, are levels of volatility that are unheard of in developed markets. For example, there have been 435 currency crises across 195 countries over...

The dramatic impact of the current crisis on performance of businesses across sectors and economies have been headlining the business press for the past many months. Interestingly, the impact of the crisis across categories of goods/services and across economies reveals several interesting...

The marketing literature on product warranty and extended warranty has largely focused on their role as segmentation instruments in risk-averse consumer markets. Preserving this insurance rationale, we highlight the role of extended warranty in channel coordination. We derive explicit demand...

An important phenomenon on the Internet has been the emergence of "infomediaries" or Internet referral services such as Autobytel.com and Carpoint.com in the automobile industry, Avviva.com in real estate and Healthcareadvocates.com in medicine. These services offer consumers the opportunity to...

We show that returns policies increase manufacturer profitability by attenuating price competition between retailers. This effect holds only in the presence of end-user demand uncertainty. The conditions under which a returns policy raises the manufacturer's profit are weaker when retailing is a...

The success of any user-generated content website depends crucially on its asset of content contributors. How firms should invest in the acquisition and retention of content contributors represents a novel question that is particularly important for these websites. We develop a vector...

The success of any User-Generated Content (UGC) website depends crucially on its asset of content contributors. How firms should invest in the acquisition and retention of content contributors represents a novel question that is particularly important for these websites. We develop a vector...

The marketing literature on product warranty and extended warranty has largely focused on their role as segmentation instruments in risk-averse consumer markets. Preserving this insurance rationale, we highlight the role of extended warranty in channel coordination. We derive explicit demand...

An important phenomenon on the Internet has been the emergence of "infomediaries" or Internet referral services such as Autobytel.com and Carpoint.com in the automobile industry, Avviva.com in real estate and Healthcareadvocates.com in medicine. These services offer consumers the opportunity to...