Consumer and digital perspectives in operations management: embracing the consumer mindset and digital future
This dissertation studies how consumer reactions and digital market structures shape firm strategies and supply chain outcomes. It develops four analytical studies that connect consumer-facing pricing dynamics and digital distribution choices to profitability, incentives, and supply chain efficiency.
Two studies examine new product supply chains in which consumer demand exhibits the reference price effect, so current demand depends on both current and past prices. In this setting, reference-dependent demand can strengthen incentives for upstream cost-reducing process improvement and increase profitability, because future price reductions become more valuable. At the same time, stronger reference effects can worsen coordination under decentralization, reducing supply chain efficiency relative to a centralized benchmark.
When the retailer can carry inventory across periods, reference dependence expands the conditions under which strategic stockpiling is optimal, reshapes intertemporal wholesale and retail prices, and can shift value capture within the channel.
Two studies focus on digital supply chains. One analyzes quality and anti-piracy decisions when network benefits accrue only to legitimate users and piracy acts as a competing channel, identifying when eliminating piracy is optimal versus when firms should prioritize improving the legitimate product.
The final study compares agency selling and subscription distribution under bargaining, characterizing how bargaining power, platform terms, and content longevity determine channel choice and negotiated payments.Overall, the dissertation provides implications for pricing paths, process improvement, inventory carryover, anti-piracy strategy, and platform contracting.