We consider scheduling a shared server in a two class make to stock closed queueing net work We include server switching costs and lost sales costs equivalently server starvation penalties for lost jobs If the switching costs are zero the optimal policy has a monotonic threshold type of switching curve provided that the service times are identical For completely symmetric systems without set up...

Amazon’s Free App of the Day program, aimed at improving app visibility using daily free promotions, is a compelling experiment in the ‘economics of free’. In this study, we investigate the longer-term consequences of free app promotions on the performance of apps on Amazon Appstore. In particular, we quantify the causal impact of such promotions on apps’ future download volumes, star ratings, ...

Revised July, 2008 We examine the role of reservations in capacity-constrained services with a focus on restaurants. Although customers value reservations, restaurants typically neither charge for them nor impose penalties for failing to honor them. However, reservations impose costs on firms offering them. We highlight ways in which reservations can increase a firm’s sales by altering customer...

The objective of this paper is to optimize sales lifecycle performance at United Biosource Corporation through the Six Sigma DMAIC methodology to produce fact based, and data driven approaches with reduced process inconsistency. This methodology was applied to identify inefficiencies within the current sales lifecycle process, including excessive data collection and workflow activities. Evaluat...

To make informed forecasting and replenishment decisions, many companies bring together operational elements of production and distribution with sales and marketing, executing Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) collaborative improvement processes. As cross-functional and consensus-based processes, S&OP activities create value by keeping supply and demand in balance. But most S&OP arrangements...

Recent studies have shown that as demand becomes irregular and complex (i.e., lumpy), a possible approach for managing such uncertainty is to collect information directly from customers. This implies that the sales units have to move closer to customers, analyse their likely requirements, and collect quantitative and structured data as well as qualitative and subjective insights. However, as in...

Amazon’s Free App of the Day program, aimed at improving app visibility using daily free promotions, is a compelling experiment in the ‘economics of free’. In this study, we investigate the longer-term consequences of free app promotions on the performance of apps on Amazon Appstore. In particular, we quantify the causal impact of such promotions on apps’ future download volumes, star ratings, ...

We consider a company selling heterogeneous products where the final price is set by negotiation between sales agents and customers. Negotiation is common in many industries including retail automotive sales, consumer lending, insurance and many business-to-business markets. We assume that each sales agent has a minimum reserve price that he/she will accept and each customer has a maximum willi...

Loss of customer goodwill in uncapacitated single level lot-sizing is studied with a mixed integer programming model extending the well-known Wagner-Whitin (WW) model. The objective is to maximize profit from production and sales of a single good over a finite planning horizon. Demand, costs, and prices vary with time. Unsatisfied demand cannot be backordered. It leads to the immediate loss of ...