Consumers often purchase goods that are "hard to find" to conspicuously display their exclusivity and social status. Firms that produce such conspicuously consumed goods such as designer apparel, fashion goods, jewelry, etc., often face challenges in making optimal pricing and production...

We study the offering of discretionary services, those for which longer processing times yield higher quality, but also create more system congestion. Facing delay-sensitive customers that are heterogeneous in quality sensitivity, firms offer a service line (i.e., a menu of service variants...