A classic example that illustrates how observed customer behavior impacts other customers' decisions is the selection of a restaurant whose quality is uncertain. Customers often choose the busier restaurant, inferring that other customers in that restaurant know something that they do not. In an...

We investigate learning by doing in the newsvendor inventory problem. An earlier study observed that decision makers tend to anchor their orders around average demand and fail to adjust sufficiently toward the expected profit-maximizing order. Principles of behavioral theory suggest some...

We study a problem of selling a fixed number of goods over a finite and known horizon. After presenting a procedure for computing optimal decision policies and some numerical results of a simple heuristic policy for the problem, we describe results from three experiments involving financially...

Aservice encounter is an experience that extends over time. Therefore, its effective management must include the control of the timing of the delivery of each of the service's elements and the enhancement of the customer's experience between and during the delivery of the various elements. This...

Asupplier stocking goods for delivery to a retailer may face a (finite-horizon) service-level agreement (SLA). In this context, the SLA is a commitment by a supplier to achieve a minimum fill rate over a specified time horizon. This kind of SLA is an important, but understudied coordination...

In the newsvendor problem a decision maker orders inventory before a one period selling season with stochastic demand. If too much is ordered, stock is left over at the end of the period, whereas if too little is ordered, sales are lost. The expected profit-maximizing order quantity is well...