Companies in a variety of industries (e.g., airlines, hotels, theaters) often use last-minute sales to dispose of unsold capacity. Although this may generate incremental revenues in the short term, the long-term consequences of such a strategy are not immediately obvious: More discounted...

We consider an <i>M</i>/<i>M</i>/1 queueing system with impatient consumers who observe the length of the queue before deciding whether to buy the product. The product may have high or low quality, and consumers are heterogeneously informed. The firm chooses a slow or (at a cost) a fast service rate. In...

Technology transfer to low-cost locations offers global firms an opportunity to reduce their variable costs involved in serving emerging markets. However, such moves may also make imitation by local competitors easier. As a consequence, technology transfer may create competition in the local...

Remanufacturing is a production strategy whose goal is to recover the residual value of used products. Used products can be remanufactured at a lower cost than the initial production cost, but consumers value remanufactured products less than new products. The choice of production technology...

We consider a monopolist expert offering a service with a "credence" characteristic. A credence service is one in which the customer cannot verify, even after a purchase, whether or not the amount of prescribed service was appropriate; examples include legal, medical, or consultancy services, and...

In the health-care domain, diagnostic service centers provide advice to patients over the phone about what the most appropriate course of action is based on their symptoms. Managers of such centers must strike a balance between accuracy of advice, callers' waiting time, and staffing costs by...