Physicians may learn about prescription drug effectiveness directly from the firm via detailing or from patient experience. Patient-mediated learning is aided by the use of free drug samples. The effective use of samples is hampered by a lack of understanding of its exact return on investment...

This paper explores firms’ incentives to invest in data protection to mitigate the risk of compromising consumer privacy, in the context of duopoly competition with behavior-based pricing. We highlight the unique nature of privacy protection as a product characteristic, which distinguishes a...

Understanding and measuring social inter-correlations among consumers are important for marketing researchers as consumers form social networks and their behavior and preference are likely to be interdependent. In this paper, we show that the estimation of consumers' social inter-correlations...

We investigate time lapses that interrupt product consumption. Preeminent examples are commercial breaks during television or radio programming. We suggest that breaks facilitate consumers searching for alternatives. Specifically, when there is so much uncertainty that consumers are unclear...

This paper examines a model of duopoly firms selling to an exogenously formed buyer group consisting of members with heterogeneous preferences. Two research questions are addressed: (1) when is it optimal for a buyer group to commit to exclusive purchase from a single seller, and (2) how does...

Online social networks such as Twitter and Facebook have become increasingly popular. An interesting question is whether, once people become friends in these online social networks, they really influence each other. Although a stream of research has studied the social interaction effect, many of...

This paper examines a model of duopoly firms selling to an exogenously formed buyer group consisting of members with heterogeneous preferences. Two research questions are addressed: (1) when is it optimal for a buyer group to commit to exclusive purchase from a single seller, and (2) how does...

When companies purchase IT products for their employees, departments or divisions, whether to standardize on one product or to allow the users to make their own choices is an important decision for IT managers to make. By consolidating demand and committing to buy from a single seller,...

This article models interactions between basketball teams in order to estimate individual players’ offensive production. A theoretical model predicts that, in equilibrium, better offensive players will shoot more often and that all offensive players will average the same number of points per...

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...