Demand volatility and production lead time oblige manufacturers of made-to-stock goods to use economic forecasts in deciding on production quantities. Manufacturers of finitely durable goods face an additional complication -- in making production decisions, they must consider not only the...

With a posterior price matching (PM) policy, a seller guarantees to reimburse the price difference to a consumer who buys a product before the seller marks it down. Such a policy has been widely adopted by retailers. We examine the impact of a posterior PM policy on consumers' purchasing...

We develop a demand rate model for the optimisation of retail sales of perishable assets when consumers track prices over the sales horizon. We model this behaviour within an aggregate demand framework, solving the initial joint inventory and pricing problem when the demand is deterministic as...

Many durable products cannot be used without a contingent consumable product, e.g., printers require ink, iPods require songs, razors require blades, etc. For such products, manufacturers may be able to lock in consumers by making their products incompatible with consumables that are produced by...

In the context of global climate change, the solar photovoltaic (PV) energy has regained its attention by many governments. The purpose of this paper is to study the coordination mechanisms of the photovoltaic supply chain considering the strategic consumers' behavior under the government's...

Oligopolistic retailers decide on the initial inventories of an undifferentiated limited-lifetime product offered to strategic consumers. A manufacturer sets the first-period (full) price, while the second-period (clearance) price is determined by a market clearing process. The resulting...

Many durable products provide value only when used together with contingent services or consumable components, e.g. light fixtures (bulbs), printers (ink), electronics (batteries). Consumers need only have access to the contingent consumable components to continue to derive service from a...

We examine optimal selling mechanisms with ex-ante commitment for a nondurable good when the seller does not observe the times at which strategic consumers arrive on the market and how much they are willing to pay for the good. Assuming consumer risk neutrality, we demonstrate in this...

This paper studies the benefits of money-back guarantees (MBGs) on the seller under the presence of strategic consumers. The seller initially can offer the MBGs or no-MBGs in the selling season but may sell the leftover inventory at a salvage price without the MBGs at the end of the season. The...