Study of Business Strategies in the Digital Economy

摘要

This dissertation considers two research problems that Information Technology (IT) service firms and IT-intensive productsrnmanufacturers face in the digital economy.rnThe first essay deals with the yield management for IT service firms. Given a fixed capacity of the IT workforce within arnfirm, the nature of IT projects, the demand uncertainty, and the growing competition among IT vendors, IT service firmsrncannot avoid occasionally holding the excess workforce. We propose an analytical model which prescribes an optimal policyrnfor yield management to manage the excess capacity of an IT vendor’s labor pool by using online reverse auctionrnmarketplaces such as Elance (www.elance.com). Our model considers an IT service firm which receives projects through twornchannels: a conventional procurement channel and an online auction spot market. The proposed model determines optimalrnonline auction participation and biding (pricing) policies.rnThe second essay considers the sequential and overlapping introduction of IT-intensive products such as software orrncomputer components. Pricing the overlapping generations of a product line is highly correlated with the extent of innovationrnover generations because consumers face a “buy or wait” decision problem and the producer faces a cannibalization problemrnamong overlapping generations. Our analytical model intends to examine the relationship between the pricing and the extentrnof innovation of IT-intensive goods.