Stock-outs convey information about the propensity of other consumers to purchase a product and this can increase the willingness of marginally interested consumers to buy. But in order to leverage stock-outs, firms must be able to capture the extra demand. We show how asymmetric inventory...

We study how rational customers choose between two congested service facilities with finite buffer space and unknown service value when waiting is expensive. Customers observe an imperfect private signal indicating which service facility may provide more service value, as well as the queue...

We study observational learning in environments where customers choose among multiple options with uncertain quality for which they observe the aggregate choices of previous customers (the sales of each option). When customers have heterogeneous knowledge about quality, the choices of better...

We study the informational role stock-outs may play when consumers have heterogeneous information about the quality of a firm's product. Typically, in a newsvendor world, matching uncertain demand with inventory leads inevitably to stock-outs. When, in addition, consumers are heterogeneously...

We study the impact of observational learning in large scale congested service systems with servers having heterogenous quality levels and customers that are heterogonously informed about the server quality. Providing congestion information to all customers allows them to avoid congested...

The first-in, first-out (FIFO) queue discipline respects the order of arrival but is not efficient when customers have heterogeneous waiting costs. Priority queues, in which customers with higher waiting costs are served before customers with lower waiting costs, are more efficient but usually...