This paper provides a theory of rationing where rationing functions as an effective mechanism for second degree price discrimination by a monopoly seller. When a seller charges multiple prices on homogenous products to all consumers, supply at the lowest price is limited and rationed among...

A consumer contest is a sales promotion technique that requires participants to apply certain skills as they compete for prizes or awards. This article is the first to employ a game-theoretical approach to investigate consumer contest design issues, including prize structure, segmentation, and...

Because uncertainties around innovative technologies resolve over time, investments in such technologies are often made in stages so that organizations can use the knowledge gained from earlier stages to decide the next step. Previous studies usually assume that once some uncertainty is...

Shifts to more distributed forms of organizations and the prevalence of interorganizational relationships have lead to increasing needs for knowledge transfers between entities with asymmetric and incomplete information. Due to such information asymmetry and incompleteness, parties seeking...

We derive the closed-form solution that characterizes the equilibrium in the circular city model, when competing firms have heterogeneous production costs. Tractability issues in this setting are well-known and have not been resolved in prior work. In this paper, the equilibrium solution...

Transaction cost theory has largely considered specific investments as exogenous, leading to calls for studying them as endogenous decisions. We examine firms' specific investment decisions through a game-theoretic model of bilateral, sequential decisions in an extant franchisor-franchisee...

With the rise of the Internet economy, an increasing number of firms are offering their core products through online platforms, but retail add-ons directly to consumers. Meanwhile, many online platforms have also started adopting the agency (model) contract, where the upstream firms decide the...

We consider an online market where consumers may obtain digital goods from two mutually exclusive channels: a legitimate channel consisting of many law-abiding retailers, or a piracy channel consisting of many piracy services. We analyze consumer choice, retailer strategy and piracy control...

Third-party sellers in online marketplaces provide wide product/service variety and are highly heterogeneous in the capability of delivering value to buyers. Seller variety and value heterogeneity shape seller competition, which then affects the marketplace owner’s profit. This paper presents...

The relationship between brand equity and channel governance is recognized in practice and is of particular interest to senior managers. However, research in marketing on this topic is limited and practitioners and scholars seem divided on the nature of this relationship. To guide practice and...