This paper studies two types of threshold-induced effects: a surge of new sign-ups around the time when the thresholds of group-buying deals are reached, and a stronger positive relation between the number of new sign-ups and the cumulative number of sign-ups before the thresholds are reached...

This paper studies the design of group-buying mechanisms in a two-period game where cohorts of consumers arrive at a deal and make sign-up decisions sequentially. A firm can adopt either a sequential mechanism where the firm discloses to second-period arrivals the number of sign-ups accumulated...

Archimedes once said "give me a fulcrum, and I shall move the world." In this paper, we study the optimal timing of contingently placing a "fulcrum" in the context of crowdfunding, with the potential of tilting the random pledging process from failure to success. Specifically, we consider a...

We consider a monopolistic firm selling two substitutable products to a stream of sequential arrivals whose purchase decisions can be influenced by earlier purchases. Before demand realizes, the firm faces a newsvendor problem for the two products with economies of scale in production for each....

We consider a sales effort management problem under an all-or-nothing constraint. The seller will receive no bonus/revenue if the sales volume fails to reach a predetermined sales target at the end of the sales horizon. Throughout the sales horizon, the sales process can be moderated by the...