Price protection is a commonly used practice between manufacturers and retailers in the personal computer (PC) industry motivated by drastic declines of product values during the product life cycle. It is a form of rebate given by the manufacturer to the retailer for units unsold at the...

We show that returns policies do increase manufacturer profitability by attenuating price competition between retailers. This effect holds only in the presence of end-user demand uncertainty. The conditions under which a returns policy raises the manufacturer's profit are weaker when retailing...

Feature overload refers to the phenomenon wherein consumers purchase feature rich products but subsequently don't use all the features. We try to understand why this occurs as an equilibrium outcome. We focus on two aspects of consumer preference: the uncertainty about feature need and the...