Firms often have to make their production decisions under conditions of demand uncertainty. This is especially true for product categories such as automobiles and technology goods where the lead time needed for manufacturing forces firms to make production decisions well in advance of the...

Although negotiating over prices with sellers is common in many markets such as automobiles, furniture, services, consumer electronics, etc., it is not clear how a haggling price policy can help a firm gain a strategic advantage or whether it is even sustainable in a competitive market. In this...

This paper develops a model to address an important problem facing a manufacturer of a durable product. That is, how can it plan its new product introductions to minimize the obsolescence of the old product, preserve its market for the new product, and keep copycat products at bay? We analyze...

We study the signalling strategy of a principal who is privately informed about its high demand potential to an uninformed risk-neutral agent. We analyze the model in the context of a contract between a franchisor and a franchisee. We examine the distortions of a two-part pricing scheme...

We consider two broad categories of incentives by which a manufacturer can motivate its retailers to provide high customer satisfaction: (1) manufacturer assistance that reduces the retailer's cost of providing customer satisfaction (CS assistance); and (2) customer satisfaction index (CSI)...