Hubert Pun

Recent Refereed Articles

• Pun, H., DeYong, G.D., (forthcoming), "Competing with Copycats when Customers Are Strategic", Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.

  Abstract: In this paper, we use a two-period game theoretical model to examine the decisions of a manufacturer and a copycat firm who are competing for strategic customers. The manufacturer decides on the amount of its market expansion advertising investment in the first period and on its pricing strategy in both periods. Advertising increases the “size of the pie,” but eventually the manufacturer may end up inadvertently sharing the benefits with the copycat. After the first period, the copycat makes a market-entry decision, and, if it opts to enter, it also decides on a pricing strategy. The customers are forward-looking strategic, and they decide whether or not to buy, when to buy, and which product to buy. We find that, interestingly, lower quality levels of the manufacturer’s product may increase the manufacturer’s prices and profit. Moreover, the manufacturer may be worse off when customers are more likely to purchase its product immediately rather than wait for a price reduction or for the copycat’s product. Finally, the copycat may be worse off when customers withhold their purchases in the first period in anticipation of the possibility of copycat product becoming available in a later period.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/msom.2016.0613

• Begen, M.A., Pun, H., Yan, X.H., 2016, "Supply and Demand Uncertainty Reduction Efforts and Cost Comparison", International Journal of Production Economics, October 180: 125 - 134.

  Abstract: In industries like health care, consumer goods and agriculture, shortages are widely observed and the consequences can be costly. One of the main drivers of such shortages is the uncertain nature of supply and demand. To reduce uncertainties, sufficient information about supply and demand can be obtained by gathering relevant data (e.g., auditing suppliers and conducting market research). In this paper, we conduct an analysis to examine the impacts of supply uncertainty, demand uncertainty and uncertainty reduction efforts on production quantity and total cost. We show that in the absence of uncertainty reduction efforts, when the financial consequences of shortages are large or when the unit benefit is large, supply uncertainty is more costly than demand uncertainty. In addition, exerting supply uncertainty reduction effort always causes the firm to produce fewer units than exerting demand uncertainty reduction effort. Although supply uncertainty reduction effort delivers a larger degree of improvement to total cost (and hence, is more efficient), reduced supply uncertainty still leads to a higher system cost than does reduced demand uncertainty.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2016.07.013

• Pun, H., Ghamat, S., 2016, "The Value of Partnership Under Competition: When Competitors May Be R & D Joint-Venture and Supply-Chain Partners for a Critical Component", International Journal of Production Economics, July 177: 1 - 11.

  Abstract: Conventional wisdom suggests that firms are worse off when the intensity of competition increases. However, when competitors have the option of cooperating as supply-chain and R& D joint venture (RJV) partners, the findings may be counterintuitive. In this paper, we consider two competing firms that must develop a critical component for their products. They must decide whether to develop a distinct component or to form an RJV with their competitor in order to develop a common component, and how much research effort should be exerted to improve the quality of this component. Forming an RJV partnership reduces R&D investment because both firms are jointly responsible for the research cost, but customers perceive the products to be less differentiated, thus leading to a more intense degree of competition between products. Moreover, one of the manufacturers does not produce this component and must therefore decide whether to outsource the production of this component to its competitor or to a third-party supplier. We examine the following two drivers of competition: (1) competition because the two base products are substitutable and (2) when the two firms form an RJV to develop a common component, the competition between these two products intensifies. Our main results show that both firms are better off when the competitiveness of the industry increases or when forming an RJV intensifies the competition between two products. Moreover, we investigate the robustness of our results to the firms’ bargaining powers by considering a generalized Nash bargaining game where firms negotiate on the RJV partnership decision, and we find that unless the supplier has a very large bargaining power, our results hold.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2016.03.018

• Pun, H., 2015, "The more the better? Optimal degree of supply-chain cooperation between competitors.", Journal of the Operational Research Society, December 12(66): 2092 - 2101.

  Abstract: We consider the outsourcing strategy problem of two competing original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) whose products are each made up of two components. The OEMs have different specializations, and therefore the component that each firm can produce in-house is different. Each firm must decide whether to outsource the other component to the competing OEM or to a third-party supplier. Prior research has demonstrated that competitors can be better off cooperating as supply-chain partners; therefore, one might expect that, as long as the OEMs are not at a severe cost disadvantage, they should maximize their cooperation as supply-chain partners, especially when competition between products is strong. Interestingly, this study finds that more cooperation between competitors may actually be harmful. Under certain conditions, while one of the OEMs should outsource to the competing firm, the other should outsource to a third-party supplier, even when the third-party supplier is more expensive and the competition is intense.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/jors.2015.40

• DeYong, G.D., Pun, H., 2015, "Is dishonesty the best policy? Supplier behavior in a multi-tier supply chain", International Journal of Production Economics, December 170(A): 1 - 13.

  Abstract: In this paper, we examine suppliers? dishonest behaviour in a multi-tiered supply chain. In particular, we consider a buyer purchasing a product consisting of two components from a tier-one supplier. The tier-one supplier produces one component in-house and purchases the other component from a tier-two supplier. The suppliers decide their investment in production technology, but the production technologies are imperfect, so the components may be defective. In the unfortunate situation where a defective component is produced, the seller can choose to rework the component to an acceptable standard (honesty) or may ship it without reworking (dishonesty). In turn, the buyer has the option of accepting the product “as is” or may conduct an inspection to identify defective components before accepting the delivery. Our results show that the buyer can benefit from either a high rework cost or when the suppliers? negative consequences from cheating are low. We also identify strategy shift-points where the changes in the players? tactics lead to rapidly changing outcomes. Finally, we examine the supply chain inefficiencies introduced by the dishonest behaviour of the suppliers.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2015.09.006

• Pun, H., Heese, H.S., 2015, "A note on budget allocation for market research and advertising", International Journal of Production Economics, August 166: 85 - 89.

  Abstract: Firms that introduce new products often conduct market research to reduce the substantial uncertainty in demand. When a fixed budget is assigned to marketing-oriented activity, investments in market research must be balanced against other advertising expenses. We characterize a firm?s optimal marketing and production decisions for a new product. The larger a firm?s production cost, the higher is the cost associated with unsold products. Market research increases the forecast accuracy and thus reduces the risk of overage. As a consequence, one might expect that a firm?s investment in market research should be higher if it faces higher production costs. Interestingly we find that an increase in the production cost may sometimes lead to a decrease in the optimal investment in market research, even when the marketing budget is not restrictive.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2015.04.013

• Pun, H., Heese, H.S., 2015, "Controlling a supplier’s subcontracting decisions through contractual enforcement or economic incentives", International Journal of Production Research, January 53(1): 127 - 140.

  Abstract: Suppliers often subcontract part of their workload to other suppliers, and manufacturers might suffer severe consequences if they do not anticipate their suppliers’ incentives to subcontract. In this paper, we study the case where a manufacturer outsources two tasks to a top-tier supplier. The manufacturer must decide whether it should design a contract that enforces that the different tasks are completed by the appropriate suppliers, and when it is preferable to use economic incentives to manipulate the top-tier supplier’s subcontracting behaviour. We find that when the cost difference between suppliers of different tiers is small and the correlation between the risks associated with the two tasks is minimal, the manufacturer can benefit from designing a contract that ensures the preferred subcontracting behaviour, if the cost of enforcing such a contract is not too high. However, when such enforcement cost is substantial, the manufacturer might be better off manipulating the top-tier supplier’s economic incentives.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2014.939242

• Pun, H., 2014, "Supplier selection of a critical component when the production process can be improved", International Journal of Production Economics, August 154: 127 - 135.

  Abstract: In this paper, we consider the scenario where an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) has decided to outsource the production of a critical component. There are two potential suppliers: one of them is an independent supplier, while the other is a manufacturer that sells a competing product. The customers are heterogeneous in taste preferences, and the firms have products that are horizontally differentiated. Firms can perform R&D activity to improve the production process of this critical component, resulting in a larger customer value. The OEM needs to decide (1) whether to outsource the production of the component to the independent supplier or to the competitor, and (2) whether the OEM or the supplier should invest in the improvement of the production process of the component. We find that it may be optimal to outsource to the competitor and let the competitor be responsible for improving the production process, even though the competitor has the highest cost. We also find that when it is optimal to outsource the production to the independent supplier, the competitor is worse off if the OEM uses the more costly firm to improve the process.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2014.04.020

• Pun, H., Heese, H.S., 2014, "Outsourcing to suppliers with unknown capabilities", European Journal of Operational Research, April 234(1): 108 - 118.

  Abstract: We investigate the make-buy decision of a manufacturer who does not know its potential suppliers’ capabilities. In order to mitigate the consequences of this limited knowledge, the manufacturer can either perform in-house or audit suppliers. An audit reveals the audited supplier’s capability such that the manufacturer can base the make-buy decision on the audit outcome; the manufacturer might also learn from the audit and update its beliefs about the capabilities of the unaudited suppliers. Interestingly, using a very general model we find that the manufacturer’s decision can be independent of both the number of available suppliers and of the mechanism it uses to update its beliefs after an audit. We illustrate our general model by considering a possible application, where a manufacturer is making the outsource-audit decisions when the suppliers are more cost effective. However, when outsourcing to supplier, the manufacturer would face the uncertainty of whether or not the delivered task can integrate well with the other parts of the project.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2013.10.068

• Pun, H., 2013, "Channel Structure Design for Complementary Products under a Co-opetitive Environment", Decision Sciences, August 44(4): 785 - 796.

  Abstract: In the high-tech industry, firms can be partners in one respect (e.g., resellers) and competitors in another. In this article, we investigate the channel structure problem for two firms-each selling competing products in two complementary marketswho are deciding whether to sell their products to customers directly or distribute one of them through a competitor. The customers are heterogeneous and both firms have products that are horizontally differentiated. When selling products directly, the firm can coordinate the prices of the two complementary products and avoid the inefficiency of double marginalization. However, selling (indirectly) through the competing manufacturer can mitigate competition because the competitor shares the profit of both competing products and therefore does not price its own products aggressively. One might expect that when the externality across the markets is strong, firms would prefer to sell both products directly (rather than through the competitor) in order to take advantage of the complementarity between markets and eliminate the inefficiency of double marginalization. Interestingly, we find that even though the first mover chooses to sell both products directly, the second mover forsakes the opportunity to coordinate the prices of its products and instead opts to distribute one of the products through the first mover.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/deci.12031

• Bretthauer, K., Heese, H.S., Pun, H., Coe, E., 2011, "Blocking in Healthcare Operations: A New Heuristic and an Application", Production and Operations Management, May/June 20(3): 375 - 391.

  Abstract: We consider the problem of optimal capacity allocation in a hospital setting, where patients pass through a set of units, for example intensive care and acute care, or acute care and post-acute care. If the second stage is full, a patient whose service at the first stage is complete is blocked and cannot leave the first stage. We develop a new heuristic for tandem systems to efficiently evaluate the effects of such blocking on system performance and we demonstrate that this heuristic performs well when compared to exact solutions and other approaches presented in the literature. In addition, we show how our tandem heuristic can be used as a building block to model more complex multi-stage hospital systems with arbitrary patient routing, and we derive insights and actionable capacity strategies for a real hospital system where such blocking occurs between units.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1937-5956.2011.01230.x

• Pun, H., Heese, H.S., 2010, "The Value of Losing Control: Competition in Markets for Complements", Naval Research Logistics, March 57(2): 188 - 210.

  Abstract: When selling complementary products, manufacturers can often benefit from considering the resulting cross-market interdependencies. Although using independent retailers makes it difficult to internalize these positive externalities, the ensuing double marginalization can mitigate within-market competition. We use standard game theoretic analysis to determine optimal distribution channel strategies (through independent retailers or integrated) for competing manufacturers who participate in markets for complements. Our results suggest that a firm's optimal channel choice is highly dependent on its competitive positioning. A firm with a competitive advantage in terms of product characteristics (customer preferences) or production capabilities (cost) might benefit from selling through company-controlled stores, allowing coordinated pricing across the two markets, whereas a less competitive firm might be better off using independent channel intermediaries to mitigate price competition. We consider two scenarios depending on whether the two firms make their distribution channel decisions sequentially or simultaneously. Although firms are unlikely to make such decisions at exactly the same instant, the simultaneous model also serves as a proxy for the scenario where firms decide sequentially, but where they cannot observe each other's strategic channel choices. For the sequential case, we find that the sequence of entry can have tremendous impact on the two firms'profits; whereas in some cases, the first mover can achieve substantially higher profits, we find that when the two markets are of sufficiently different size and only loosely related, a firm with a competitive advantage might be better off as a follower. Interestingly, our results suggest that, when the markets are of rather similar size, both firms are better off if they enter the industry sequentially. In those cases, the first entrant has incentive to reveal its planned channel strategies, and the follower has incentive to seek out and consider this information.

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