This paper examines a unique selling strategy, Group Buying, under which consumers enjoy a discounted group price if they are willing and able to achieve a required group size and coordinate their transaction time. We argue that Group Buying allows a seller to gain from facilitating consumer...

Product reviews by third parties are growing in popularity. This paper examines when and how a manufacturing firm should adapt its marketing strategies to such reviews. For example, should a firm receiving an unfavorable review reduce its price or adjust its advertising? Should a winning product...

This paper defines a unique type of product or service offering, termed , and analyzes a novel selling strategy, termed (PS). A probabilistic good is not a concrete product or service but an offer involving a probability of getting any one of a set of multiple distinct items. Under the...

This paper explores the benefits of letting customers escape from prepurchased service contracts by offering refunds for cancellations. We show that such a policy creates opportunities for in a capacity-constrained service—i.e., collecting cancellation fees from advance buyers who cancel, and...

Although advance selling and probabilistic selling differ in both motivation and implementation, we argue that they share a common characteristic--both offer consumers a choice involving buyer uncertainty. We develop a formal model to examine the general economics of purchase options that...

This paper analyzes how a firm should adjust its marketing expenditures and its price to defend its position in an existing market from attack by a competitive new product. Our focus is to provide usable managerial recommendations on the strategy of response. In particular we show that if...

Channel coordination and, more generally, coordination of activities between interdependent economic agents is even more important today than when the paper was published more than 20 years ago. One reason is the trend toward globalization and outsourcing caused, in part, by the development of...

For every new product and service entrant, there are usually many incumbents who must defend their positions in the market. Hence, defensive strategy is as least as critical as new-product strategy. Our 1983 article argued that defensive strategy critically depends on the distribution of buyer...

This paper analyzes how a firm should adjust its marketing expenditures and its price to defend its position in an existing market from attack by a competitive new product. Our focus is to provide usable managerial recommendations on the strategy of response. In particular we show that if...