Scholars@Duke
Fernando Bernstein

Fernando Bernstein

William and Sue Gross Professor of Business Administration
Fuqua School of Business
fernando.bernstein@duke.edu
Box 90120, Durham, NC 27708-0120
417A Fuqua Sch of Bus, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications

A Customer Choice Model of Impulse Buying in Social Commerce

Journal Article Naval Research Logistics · January 1, 2025 Social commerce integrates user interactions and user-generated content with commercial activities in the context of social media platforms. Examples include Instagram Shopping and TikTok Shopping, where brands attach product tags directly to their posts, ... Full text Cite

Distribution Strategy, Capability Investment, and Government Regulation

Journal Article Production and Operations Management · January 1, 2025 This paper investigates how a manufacturer’s internal sourcing capability and government regulation influence the supplier’s distribution strategy and the manufacturer’s sourcing and capability investment decisions. We consider a supply chain consisting of ... Full text Cite

Managing Customer Search: Assortment Planning for a Subscription Box Service

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · September 1, 2023 Problem definition: This paper focuses on subscription box services in which a provider selects the assortment of products to include in the box by taking into account the customer’s preferences. Customers interested in purchasing a product choose between ... Full text Cite

Intertemporal Content Variation with Customer Learning

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · May 1, 2022 Problem definition: We analyze a firm that sells repeatedly to a customer population over multiple periods. Although this setting has been studied extensively in the context of dynamic pricing—selling the same product in each period at a varying price—we c ... Full text Cite

Competition between two-sided platforms under demand and supply congestion effects

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · September 1, 2021 Problem definition: This paper explores the impact of competition between platforms in the sharing economy. Examples include the cases of Uber and Lyft in the context of ride-sharing platforms. In particular, we consider competition between two platforms t ... Full text Cite

A dynamic clustering approach to data-driven assortment personalization

Journal Article Management Science · May 1, 2019 We consider an online retailer facing heterogeneous customers with initially unknown product preferences. Customers are characterized by a diverse set of demographic and transactional attributes. The retailer can personalize the customers' assortment offer ... Full text Cite

Dynamic product rotation in the presence of strategic customers

Journal Article Management Science · July 1, 2017 Dynamic product rotation is perceived as a useful lever to increase sales. The effect over individual customers is, however, unclear: more choice in the future may induce them to postpone a purchase if the current offer is not sufficiently appealing, hopin ... Full text Cite

A simple heuristic for joint inventory and pricing models with lead time and backorders

Journal Article Management Science · August 1, 2016 We study a joint inventory and pricing problem in a single-stage system with a positive lead time. We consider both additive and multiplicative demand forms. This problem is, in general, intractable due to its computational complexity. We develop a simple ... Full text Cite

Advance demand information in a multiproduct system

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · December 1, 2015 In this paper we examine the impact of different types of advance demand information on firm profit and on the benefits of resource flexibility. Specifically, we consider a firm that must choose capacities of resources that will be used to satisfy stochast ... Full text Cite

Dynamic assortment customization with limited inventories

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · September 1, 2015 We consider a retailer with limited inventory of identically priced, substitutable products. The retailer faces a market with multiple segments of customers that are heterogeneous with respect to their product preferences. Customers arrive sequentially, an ... Full text Cite

Cooperation in assembly systems: The role of knowledge sharing networks

Journal Article European Journal of Operational Research · January 1, 2015 Process improvement plays a significant role in reducing production costs over the life cycle of a product. We consider the role of process improvement in a decentralized assembly system in which a buyer purchases components from several first-tier supplie ... Full text Cite

Cooperation in assembly systems: The role of knowledge sharing networks

Journal Article European Journal of Operational Research · 2014 Cite

Special issue on supply chain management and collaborative logistics

Journal Article International Transactions in Operational Research · September 1, 2012 Full text Cite

Competition and cooperative bargaining models in supply chains

Journal Article Foundations and Trends in Technology, Information and Operations Management · December 1, 2011 In the last two decades or so, a significant emphasis of the research literature in operations management has been on the strategic interaction of firms in a supply chain. Individual firms in supply chains make decisions on multiple levers such as capacity ... Full text Cite

The impact of demand aggregation through delayed component allocation in an assemble-to-order system

Journal Article Management Science · June 1, 2011 We consider an assemble-to-order system in which multiple products are assembled from a common component and a set of product-dedicated components. Component capacities are chosen prior to a finitehorizon selling season, and the common component is allocat ... Full text Cite

The role of component commonality in product assortment decisions

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · March 1, 2011 We consider a firm that produces multiple variants of a product. Products are assembled using a combination of common and dedicated components. We characterize the optimal assortment and derive the optimal inventory levels for the common and dedicated comp ... Full text Cite

Free riding in a multi-channel supply chain

Journal Article Naval Research Logistics · December 1, 2009 Free riding in a multichannel supply chain occurs when one retail channel engages in the customer service activities necessary to sell a product, while another channel benefits from those activities by making the final sale. Although free riding is, in gen ... Full text Cite

Dynamic cost reduction through process improvement in assembly networks

Journal Article Management Science · April 1, 2009 We consider a decentralized assembly system in which a buyer purchases components from several first-tier suppliers. We examine the dynamics of suppliers' investments in cost-reduction initiatives over the life cycle of a product under different procuremen ... Full text Cite

"Bricks-and-mortar" vs. "clicks-and-mortar": An equilibrium analysis

Journal Article European Journal of Operational Research · June 16, 2008 The Internet has provided traditional retailers a new means with which to serve customers. Consequently, many "bricks-and-mortar" retailers have transformed to "clicks-and-mortar" by incorporating Internet sales. Examples of companies making such a transit ... Full text Cite

Competition for procurement contracts with service guarantees

Journal Article Operations Research · May 1, 2008 We consider a market with two suppliers and a set of buyers in search of procurement contracts with one of the suppliers. In particular, each buyer needs to process a certain volume of work, and each supplier's ability to process the customers' requests is ... Full text Cite

Incentives and commonality in a decentralized multiproduct assembly system

Journal Article Operations Research · July 1, 2007 In this paper, we explore the impact of decentralized decision making on the behavior of multiproduct assembly systems. Specifically, we consider a system where three components (two product specific and one common) are used to produce two end products to ... Full text Cite

Coordination mechanisms for supply chains under price and service competition

Journal Article Manufacturing and Service Operations Management · June 1, 2007 In a decentralized supply chain, with long-term competition between independent retailers facing random demands and buying from a common supplier, how should wholesale and retail prices be specified in an attempt to maximize supply-chain-wide profits? We s ... Full text Cite

Coordinating supply chains with simple pricing schemes: The role of vendor-managed inventories

Journal Article Management Science · October 18, 2006 We characterize supply chain settings in which perfect coordination can be achieved with simple wholesale pricing schemes: either retailer-specific constant unit wholesale prices or retailer-specific volume discount schemes. We confine ourselves to two-ech ... Full text Cite

Inventory policies in a decentralized assembly system

Journal Article Operations Research · March 1, 2006 We consider a system in which a single finished good is assembled from two components. Demand for the finished product is stochastic and stationary, and procurement and assembly lead times are constant. Unsatisfied demand is backordered. The inventory of e ... Full text Cite

Decentralized supply chains with competing retailers under demand uncertainty

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 2005 In this paper, we investigate the equilibrium behavior of decentralized supply chains with competing retailers under demand uncertainty. We also design contractual arrangements between the parties that allow the decentralized chain to perform as well as a ... Full text Cite

A general equilibrium model for industries with price and service competition

Journal Article Operations Research · November 1, 2004 This paper develops a stochastic general equilibrium inventory model for an oligopoly, in which all inventory constraint parameters are endogenously determined. We propose several systems of demand processes whose distributions are functions of all retaile ... Full text Cite

Comparative statics, strategic complements and substitutes in oligopolies

Journal Article Journal of Mathematical Economics · September 1, 2004 Many fundamental questions in oligopoly models reduce to the analysis of the monotonicity properties of various performance measures under the model's Nash equilibrium, with respect to specific exogenously specified parameters. These strategic parameters m ... Full text Cite

Decentralized pricing and capacity decisions in a multitier system with modular assembly

Journal Article Management Science · September 1, 2004 We model a modular assembly system in which a final assembler outsources some of the assembly task to first-tier suppliers (subassemblers), who produce modules made up of multiple components. The assembler sets module prices it will pay to the subassembler ... Full text Cite

Dynamic Inventory and Pricing Models for Competing Retailers

Journal Article Naval Research Logistics · January 1, 2004 We address infinite-horizon models for oligopolies with competing retailers under demand uncertainty. We characterize the equilibrium behavior which arises under simple wholesale pricing schemes. More specifically, we consider a periodic review, infinite-h ... Full text Cite

Pricing and replenishment strategies in a distribution system with competing retailers

Journal Article Operations Research · May 1, 2003 We consider a two-echelon distribution system in which a supplier distributes a product to N competing retailers. The demand rate of each retailer depends on all of the retailers' prices, or alternatively, the price each retailer can charge for its product ... Full text Cite