Consumers often know what kind of product they wish to purchase, but do not know which specific variant best fits their needs. As a result, a consumer may find an acceptable product in one retailer but nevertheless purchase nothing, opting to search other retailers for an even better product. We...

This paper studies a model in which consumers search among multiple competing firms for products that match their preferences at a reasonable price. We focus on how easier search, possibly due to the adoption of search-facilitating technologies such as the Internet, influences equilibrium...

Retailers must constantly strive for excellence in operations; extremely narrow profit margins leave little room for waste and inefficiency. This article reports a retailer's challenge to balance transportation, shelf space, and inventory costs. A retailer sells multiple products with stochastic...

Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (M&SOM) formally thanks the guest associate editors and reviewers, who provided expert counsel and guidance on a voluntary basis. Through their efforts the journal was able to provide submitting authors with timely, thoughtful, and constructive...

This essay discusses my view of the essential characteristics of interesting research in general and in operations management in particular. It is based on my Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Distinguished Fellows presentation given at the University of Michigan, June 27, 2011.

This paper studies competition between two firms that service time sensitive customers. Customers choose firms based on the firms' prices, the firms' expected waiting and service times, and the firms' brands. The firms may choose diverse strategies: one could choose a high price, but serve...

While every firm in a supply chain bears supply risk (the cost of insufficient supply), some firms may, even with wholesale price contracts, completely avoid inventory risk (the cost of unsold inventory). With a push contract there is a single wholesale price and the retailer, by ordering his...

We consider a simple supply chain in which a single supplier sells to several downstream retailers. The supplier has limited capacity, and retailers are privately informed of their optimal stocking levels. If retailer orders exceed available capacity, the supplier allocates capacity using a...

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...

Any buyer that depends on suppliers for the delivery of a service or the production of a make-to-order component should pay close attention to the suppliers' service or delivery lead times. This paper studies a queueing model in which two strategic servers choose their capacities/processing...