This thesis addresses two topics in the field of operations management, i.e., customer behavior and supply chain management. The first essay belongs to the literature of customer behavior and investigates customers who are both strategic and bounded ration. We study product availability management problem of a firm who repeatedly introduces new generations of a product over time, selling to strategic customers who are also affected by scarcity effects. We focus on whether it is optimal for a firm to intentionally induce scarcity. Our research provide guidelines for decision makers to adopt firm-induced scarcity in practice.

The second and the third essay belong to the area of supply chain management. In the second essay, we focus on the influence of production learning on buyer in a supply chain with two suppliers. Our results and understandings could be very constructive for a variety of industries such as semiconductor manufacturing, automobile assembly, and aircraft manufacturing. The third essay investigates a retailer’s innovation problem with a supplier who may encroach and sell directly to the market. We show the mutual impacts of supplier’s encroachment decisions and retailer’s decision of product innovation.