We consider a setting in which consumers experience distinct instances of need for a durable product at random intervals. Each instance of need is associated with a random utility and the consumers are dierentiated according to the frequency with which they experience such instances of need. We use our model of consumer utility to characterize the rm's optimal strategy of whether to sell, rent, or do a combination of both in terms of the transaction costs and consumers' usage characteristics. We nd that the two modes of operation serve dierent roles in allowing the rm to price discriminate. While sales allow the rm to discriminate among consumers of dierent usage frequencies, rentals allow it to discriminate according to consumers' realized valuations. Consequently, even when transaction costs are negligible, it is often optimal for the rm to simultaneously rent and sell its product. In addition, we nd that although sales and rentals are substitutes and that the oering of sales weakly increases rental prices, it is possible that the introduction of rentals to a pure selling operation can either increase or decrease the optimal sales prices.

For many products, consumers need to physically experience them in order to assess their own valuations. We study how the equilibrium pricing among competing retailers depend upon assortments when consumers must search for this sort of fit information and are heterogeneous in their shopping behaviors. Specifically, we consider a market that consists of two retailers and two possible products. A consumer is either loyal to one of the retailers or is a shopper who follows a rational dynamic search process based on the prices and available assortments. We demonstrate how the retailers’ equilibrium pricing strategies depend upon their assortment choices and the resulting search process. Among other things, we show that, when the retailers carry non‐overlapping assortments, as search cost increases, the equilibrium pricing strategy changes from a low price with no discounting, to a high price with deep discounting. Furthermore, we find that when a full line retailer competes with a limited line retailer, a strategy of discounting only the common product can dominate one of discounting both products together. This is not the case when his rival also carries the full product line.

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We study the provision of collaborative services under online reviews, where the service outcome depends on the effort of both the service provider and the client. The provider decides not only her own effort but also the client's, at least to some extent. The client gives the review based on his net utility upon service completion. We develop a signal‐jamming model in which the provider's inherent capability or type is unobservable, and the market infers the provider type through observable signals such as the service outcome, the client review, or both. We show that compared to the benchmark case when the service outcome is observed as a signal, the client review generally leads to less effort of both the provider and the client. The review hence tends to sacrifice the service effectiveness in favor of the efficiency of the client's effort input. Nevertheless, when clients incorporate private information about the provider type into their reviews, service providers are better motivated to devote effort. Interestingly, we find the provider's effort choices may be either strategic complements or substitutes. With a reasonable level of informativeness, online reviews could lead to favorable performance in service effectiveness, client effort efficiency, and provider type distinguishability. Surprisingly, we demonstrate that when both the review and the outcome are available, the provider may lack sufficient incentive to devote effort, resulting in inferior distinguishability of provider types. It thus illustrates that richer information may not necessarily generate favorable strategic outcomes.

This paper proposes a 32-channel-hybrid-multiplexing system on atmospheric turbulence. With the utilization of the hybrid multiplexing of orbital angular momentum (OAM), polarization, and frequency, the communication speed of the system can be significantly improved, and this system can be well combined with the existing frequency division multiplexing (FDM) optical communication network. Within this communication system, we discuss the effects of different turbulence intensities on the phase, OAM crosstalk, spectrum, and bit error rate (BER) in turbulent channels. Under strong turbulence, 46.8% of the energy leaks to the neighbor OAM and become noise when multiple topological charge states are transmitted. The research reflects the impact of various parameters of the OAM hybrid multiplexing system under turbulence, which is closer to a practical application scenario and is significant for implementing OAM communication in the turbulence channel.