This paper considers the market for digital music. We claim that the combination of the MP3 format and peer-to-peer networks has made music non-excludable and this feature is essential for the understanding of the economics of the music market. We study optimal business models for selling non-excludable goods and show that despite promising theoretical results, adding just a slight uncertainty ...

Cloud sourcing consists of outsourcing data, services and infrastructure to cloud providers. Even when this outsourcing model brings advantages to cloud customers, new threats also arise as sensitive data and critical IT services are beyond customers’ control. When an organization considers moving to the cloud, IT decision makers must select a cloud provider and must decide which parts of the o...

A product is a unit of capacity sold to self-selected low-fare customers who willingly grant the capacity provider the option to “call” the capacity at a prespecified recall price. We analyze callable products in a finite-capacity setting with two fare classes where low-fare customers book first, and show that callable products provide a riskless source of additional revenue to the capacity pro...

In ecommerce, many market followers would like to have personalization systems in place to more effectively compete with market leaders. However, retailers face a significant challenge in forming initial trust with new customers, especially when the new customers are culturally diverse. Acknowledging this dilemma, this study examines the moderating cultural effects of espoused individualism/col...

The willingness of a customer to pay for a product or service is mathematically captured by a price elasticity model. The model relates the responsiveness of customers to a change in the quoted price. In addition to overall price sensitivity, adverse selection could be observed whereby certain customer segments react differently towards price changes. In this paper the problem of determining op...

In recent years, the rapid technological advancements, the increased economic uncertainty, and the globalization of economic activities have resulted in fierce competition, and more sophisticated and demanding customers. These characteristics of the new economic environment are translated to short product life cycles, increased demand for customized products, and quick response to customers’ an...

Emissions resulted from transportation activities may lead to dangerous effects on the whole environment and human health. According to sustainability principles, in recent years researchers attempt to consider the environmental burden of logistics activities in traditional logistics problems such as vehicle routing problems (VRPs). The pollution-routing problem (PRP) is an extension of the VRP...

Location-Routing Problem (LRP) emerges as one of the hybrid optimization problems in distribution networks in which, total cost of the system would be reduced significantly by simultaneous optimization of locating a set of facilities among candidate locations and routing vehicles. In this paper, a mixed integer linear programming model is presented for a two-echelon location-routing problem wit...

This paper considers a single-sourcing network design problem for a three-level supply chain. For the first time, a novel mathematical model is presented considering risk-pooling, the inventory existence at distribution centers (DCs) under demand uncertainty, the existence of several alternatives to transport the product between facilities, and routing of vehicles from distribution centers to c...

Credit granting businesses face a challenging environment due to the wide variety of customer behaviors. While only some customers use their credit and pay regularly, a larger percentage may hardly use their available credit. As a key risk management issue, small percentages of customers become delinquent in their payments, and others become bankrupt, requiring write-off. As a business decides ...