Economics of service operations and innovation.

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Pac, M. Fazil.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania. Operations and Information Management.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Business.

Commerce.

Economics.

Management.

0454.

0501.

0505.

Local Subjects:

0454.

0501.

0505.

Physical Description:

208 pages

Contained In:

Dissertation Abstracts International 73-09A(E).

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

text file

Summary:

This dissertation examines (i) quality and pricing strategies of service providers under the presence of self-interested rational consumers, and (ii) the strategic interaction between solvers and seekers in open innovation tournaments. Consumers may not necessarily observe the operational strategies employed by service providers, however through prices and the market demand they often anticipate the incentives faced by the service providers and the procurement behavior of other consumers. For example, consumers may anticipate the expected waiting time for the service, the expected quality of the service and whether the service provider has incentives to recommend unnecessary services. Under these circumstances pricing not only helps the service provider to control the demand, hence the congestion in the system, but also serves as a signal of service quality and service strategy. To analyze the impact of the above mentioned phenomena we build queuing models in which firms decide on prices and service strategies and rational self-interested consumers choose whether or not to procure the service. In the first part, we examine the quality-speed tradeoffs in customer-intensive services. The quality or value provided by the service increases with the time the service provider spends with the customer. However, longer service times result in lower throughput and longer waiting times for customers. We analyze a revenue maximizing service provider's service rate (quality) and pricing decisions in the face of such tradeoff. In the second part, we examine an expert's pricing and diagnostic decisions at the face of a customer population that cannot self-diagnose their problems. Informed experts may not reveal the true diagnosis to the uninformed consumer in order to sell more expensive services. However, more expensive services require longer services times, hence lead to lower throughput and longer delays. We investigate when and how an expert can signal honest diagnosis to a market of rational but uninformed consumers. In the third part we analyze and compare open innovation tournaments and request for proposals (RFP) as means of procuring innovation from outside the firm. We study the tradeoff between the variety of finished products and the high cost of development in tournaments from an economic perspective focusing on the size of the available solver pool, return on solvers' effort, variability in solution quality and variability in solver ability.

Notes:

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-09(E), Section: A.

Adviser: Senthil K. Veeraraghavan.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 2012.

Local Notes:

School code: 0175.

ISBN:

9781267358509

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.