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We study how Apple and independent repair service providers used different physical, regulatory, and digital instruments to influence each other's abilities to control the repair aftermarket of the Apple iPhone between 2007 and 2020. We show how the emergence of digital instruments for enacting control, made possible through emerging functionality for tethering, encryption, and temporary binding implemented in the iPhone itself, was shaped by and shaped the actions of Apple and the independent repair service providers, and led to a dominant tension between encrypted authorization and inscription of control through Apple and collective legal action by independent repair service providers. Our analysis provides a more nuanced understanding of control enactment by highlighting the implications of using different mediums for exercising control, and we provide a new way to understand the dialectics involved in enacting control in digital product aftermarkets. Our study provides insights that can inform the regulation of digital product aftermarkets--in particular, the ongoing debate about rights-to-repair legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade mark owners have increasingly been acting similarly to those they accuse of infringement or dilution of their marks. They are acting as "ownfringers". They have been engaging in previously unheard-of competitor collaborations, collaborations with businesses in distant spaces, and self-parody. These trends typify how trade mark owners are increasingly behaving like the third parties they pursue for infringement. How should trade mark law think about these new, prevalent behaviours by mark owners? Perhaps it is just par for the course because mark owners have the right to use their marks in commerce in ways that would constitute infringement if done by third parties. Even so, by engaging in ownfringement, trade mark owners are potentially altering the balance or calculus of a number of fundamental aspects of trade mark doctrine. I explore three important doctrinal impacts of ownfringement: on likelihood of consumer confusion, trade mark distinctiveness and self-dilution, and the parody defence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the technology and design industries, one product builds on another: A smart television enhances a smart phone. However, due to complementary features, the utility that is gained by owning both products from the same firm is greater than the sum of the two products' utility if purchased from separate firms. Aftermarkets suggest that the margins of the second product would increase. Instead, we show that the firms' complementary utility offset each other, which results in reduced prices. Further, consumer purchase behavior is a function of the product release order; given a different release schedule, some consumers would purchase from a different company. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negotiations today are less likely to be characterized by information asymmetry—the notion that buyers are less informed than sellers—due to the amount of information available to buyers. A number of industries have reacted to this change by shifting their attention to earning profits in aftermarkets: products and services that augment the main purchase (e.g., add-ons, insurance, financing, service and maintenance). In these aftermarkets, firms often retain an information advantage, even if information asymmetries are eliminated from the main purchase. This has given rise to an interesting setting untapped by prior research: information "symmetry" in the front end (main purchase) and information "asymmetry" in the back end (aftermarket). The authors argue that symmetry in the front end provides an opportunity to build trust, as the knowledgeable customer can verify the information disclosed by the seller. In an observational study in the automotive industry, the authors find that customers to whom the salesperson revealed the cost of a car at the beginning of the negotiation spent significantly more in the back end than others. As corroborated in subsequent studies, this effect holds only when cost is disclosed at the beginning of the negotiation and when customers can verify the cost information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

You have probably heard that equity investors prefer Republicans over Democrats in the White House. This column explores this piece of conventional wisdom by looking at one-year market performance after a presidential election. It turns out that there may be a short-term trading opportunity for risk-tolerant investors; but over the long run, the markets do not appear to favor Republicans or Democrats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After-sales and aftermarkets are significant revenue streams for industrial companies. After-sales services are activities during warranty periods that include field technical assistance, spare parts distribution, customer care, and accessories sale. Aftermarket support involves secondary market transactions for additional products (e.g. accessories and add-ons) and product recovery processes. An awareness of the potentials of both concepts is evident by the extensive body of production and operations management (POM) publications that investigate the perspectives of both academia and practitioners. Yet, there is an absence of a systematic review to analyse research studies on after-sales and aftermarkets in a POM context. This article reviews the POM literature on after-sales services and aftermarket support. The review identifies and critically appraises 249 peer-reviewed articles published between 1970 and 2018. It examines the research clusters, investigated industry sectors, research methodologies, theories and contributions of studies. Using insights from the review process, the article also proposes theoretical foundations, sets a research agenda, and identifies optimisation problems for future after-sales and aftermarket studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critics of the technology industry are facing unique analytical obstacles to bringing successful antitrust claims against digital platforms, particularly with regard to their multi-layered structure and often free features. Recent congressional investigations into digital platforms have not deterred these companies' efforts to profit from this structure through potentially anticompetitive methods. This Note argues that the theory of antitrust aftermarkets as defined in Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Services, Inc. is an under-utilized doctrine that could be successfully applied to digital platforms. I consider two industries--mobile app stores and their payment systems, and cloud computing--as case studies for the complex economic questions plaintiffs must prove to successfully argue that these digital platforms possess market power in their respective aftermarkets. While the structure of the particular industry and the controlling law both affect the viability of such a theory, I argue that the aftermarket theory can be applied to digital platforms and should be one arrow in the quiver of enforcement agencies and plaintiffs alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aftermarket sales and profits have become an increasingly important part of an Original Equipment Manufacturer's (OEM) business model. The attractiveness of the after-sales business, however, has also been recognised by other parties (e.g. competitors, suppliers) who try to capture a share of the aftermarket. A highly profitable aftermarket creates a strong incentive for the supplier to disintermediate the established supply chain and sell directly to the OEM's aftermarket customers. To counter this threat, OEMs must be aware of the activities and actors on their aftermarket, and should understand and systematically analyse the existing or changing business relationships among the incumbent and emergent actors in the aftermarket ecosystem. In this exploratory study we use case study research with 29 companies (customer, OEM, supplier, or competitor) and draw on social network theory - in particular the concepts of structural embeddedness, structural hole and supply chain disintermediation - to examine and discuss triadic and tetradic relationship constellations (archetypes) in aftermarkets. Recognising these relationship archetypes in aftermarkets can help firms to adapt their after-sales strategies and protect the competitive advantage, revenues and profits stemming from their aftersales business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research study aimed to examine the objective which is the relationship between sales promotional expenses and sales performance in Automobile companies of Pakistan. The data collected from 3 different sources was analyzed using mean analysis to determine the impact of sales promotional expenses on sales performance. The research results showed that there happens to be a positive relationship between sales promotional expenses and sales performance. However, it should be noted that the study only considered sales promotional expenses as a factor affecting sales performance and did not take into account other factors such as marketing strategies, consumer behavior, and economic conditions. This study highlights the importance of considering sales promotional expenses in the overall marketing budget, but it is recommended that future studies take a more comprehensive approach in evaluating the impact of various factors on sales performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I introduce a stability notion, dynamic stability, for two‐sided dynamic matching markets where (i) matching opportunities arrive over time, (ii) matching is one‐to‐one, and (iii) matching is irreversible. The definition addresses two conceptual issues. First, since not all agents are available to match at the same time, one must establish which agents are allowed to form blocking pairs. Second, dynamic matching markets exhibit a form of externality that is not present in static markets: an agent's payoff from remaining unmatched cannot be defined independently of other contemporaneous agents' outcomes. Dynamically stable matchings always exist. Dynamic stability is a necessary condition to ensure timely participation in the economy by ensuring that agents do not strategically delay the time at which they are available to match. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how uncertainty affects corporate investment under varying degrees of asset redeployability. We develop new measures of asset redeployability by accounting for the usability of assets within and across industries. We identify plausibly exogenous shocks to economic uncertainty by using major economic and political events. We find that after an increase in uncertainty, firms using less redeployable capital reduce investment more. More redeployable assets exhibit higher recovery rates and are traded more actively in secondary markets. Overall, our results suggest that frictions in redeploying assets affect liquidation values and therefore make firms cautious about investment decisions under uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

App stores have become the subject of controversy and criticism within antitrust. For instance, app developers such as Spotify and Epic Games (creator of Fortnite) allege that Apple's 30% cut of all sales in the App Store violates the antitrust laws and is indicative of monopoly power. The claim is that iPhone users are locked into Apple's walled garden iOS platform, which frees Apple to engage in misconduct in the App Store "aftermarket" to the detriment of users and app developers. This Article challenges the recent economic and legal characterizations of app stores and the nature of the alleged harm. First, this Article builds an accessible, economic framework to illustrate how app stores do not represent the same type of aftermarkets that were condemned in the Supreme Court's landmark Kodak case. Importantly, the differences between Kodak-like aftermarkets and app store aftermarkets raise serious questions whether the digital revival of the aftermarket doctrine conforms with the economic realities of these markets. Second, the complexity of the commercial relationships found in app stores has raised questions regarding who has standing to seek antitrust damages in this type of market setting. This Article provides an overview of the development of the current doctrine of antitrust standing--focusing on Illinois Brick and Pepper. Further, this Article contends that Justice Kavanaugh's opinion in Pepper, which gave iPhone users the right to sue Apple over the 30% commission, was right for the wrong reason. Instead, Justice Gorsuch's dissent offers a much more economically sound approach to antitrust standing--as his "proximate cause" standard does not artificially focus on identifying the "direct purchaser," which is unnecessarily limiting for more complex commercial relationships. As the number of antitrust claims against various app stores proliferate, the consequences of faulty characterizations of app stores will only grow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author highlights the Academy of Marketing Conference 2015: The Magic in Market (AM2015) which explored the dimensions of marketing that are magical ranging from the cabbalistic to the fantastical and from the astonishing to the preternatural. He presents the final 11 papers for the special conference issue of the "Journal of Marketing Management" whose topics include an assessment of the roles of fantastical themes in the stories of marketing practitioners.

Antitrust and "Big Tech" firms are under renewed scrutiny, in part due to the dispute between Epic Games and Apple. This lawsuit strikes at the heart of the growing phenomenon of "tech-tying," a form of vertical integration in digital aftermarkets where monopolistic tech firms condition the use of their operating systems on the added use of other complimentary software or services. Judicial attitude toward claims of tying has shifted considerably over recent decades, resulting in lax enforcement against vertical integration arrangements. This Comment argues that Apple's conduct constitutes "techtying" and that competitors should be permitted to enter the aftermarkets of both iOS app distribution and iOS in-app payments processing. Antitrust laws must evolve from its industrial-era origins to account for today's hightech industry by expanding to protect competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capitalist commodities have a necessary but overlooked accompaniment: aftermarkets. Aftermarkets are conventionally understood as secondary commercial transactions linked to commodity consumption and circulation. Yet for many products with accelerating design complexity, tighter regulation, growing debt financing, safety, and sustainability concerns, the action is in aftermarkets. Following feminist economic geography's recognition of betweenness and messiness, we theorize commodities and their aftermarkets beyond the production-consumption binary. Three themes emerge. First, purchased commodities are far from finished. Commodification remains ongoing after exchange, with actors tussling over value extraction. Second, beyond transactional conceptions, aftermarkets are the loci of ongoing social relations, especially for products essential to life opportunities. Manufacturers manipulate time horizons, locking consumers into relationships while encouraging subsequent sales and preconfiguring second-hand aftermarkets. Third, commodities are imbricated in multidirectional power geometries, embodying informational, technological, financial, and labor relations that evolve in everyday circulation, use, decay, and waste. We illustrate via automobiles and their aftermarkets, visiting spaces at the production-consumption interface. Cars are increasingly embedded with digital technologies and noninterchangeable components, enabling firms to coordinate aftermarkets, marginalize independent operators, harvest driver information, and predict profits. Meanwhile, car dependencies among vulnerable households are exploited. Inequalities and conflicts unfurl between competing capitalist interests, regulators, and households across the income spectrum. Mediating social relations are predatory finance, calculative designs, data platforms, and technological rents. Commodities, we conclude, are unfinished. Aftermarkets must figure more prominently in economic geography, as important arenas of value creation suffused with uneven social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

False memories of autobiographical events can create enormous problems in forensic settings (e.g., false accusations). While multiple studies succeeded in inducing false memories in interview settings, we present research trying to reverse this effect (and thereby reduce the potential damage) by means of two ecologically valid strategies. We first successfully implanted false memories for two plausible autobiographical events (suggested by the students' parents, alongside two true events). Over three repeated interviews, participants developed false memories (measured by state-of-the-art coding) of the suggested events under minimally suggestive conditions (27%) and even more so using massive suggestion (56%). We then used two techniques to reduce false memory endorsement, source sensitization (alerting interviewees to possible external sources of the memories, e.g., family narratives) and false memory sensitization (raising the possibility of false memories being inadvertently created in memory interviews, delivered by a new interviewer). This reversed the false memory build-up over the first three interviews, returning false memory rates in both suggestion conditions to the baseline levels of the first interview (i.e., to ~15% and ~25%, respectively). By comparison, true event memories were endorsed at a higher level overall and less affected by either the repeated interviews or the sensitization techniques. In a 1-y follow-up (after the original interviews and debriefing), false memory rates further dropped to 5%, and participants overwhelmingly rejected the false events. One strong practical implication is that false memories can be substantially reduced by easy-to-implement techniques without causing collateral damage to true memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a reverse supply chain comprising two independent companies: the collector and the remanufacturer. The collector is responsible for sorting the collected used products and then transporting the ‘remanufacturable’ items to the remanufacturer. As sorting is not perfectly accurate, the misclassification errors affect the optimal decisions in the reverse supply chain. We focus on the optimal collection quantity for the collector and the optimal order quantity for the remanufacturer using game theory under both deterministic and uncertain demand. We characterise the optimal solution and show that under certain conditions, the remanufacturer should allow the collector to transport more ‘remanufacturables’ than the order quantity. We then examine the case where both the collector and the remanufacturer belong to a single company with centralised decision-making and compare the optimal collection quantities under both structures of the reverse supply chain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's economic system has yet to be adequately explained by any models. China's export-led industries were initially viewed as a source of cheap labor but its economy has now emerged as a serious competitor to advanced capitalism. However, after decades of market reform, China's state sector, rather than disappearing or being marginalized, has become a leader in strategic sectors and the driver of its investment-led growth. Heterodox political scientists and economists have long argued that China is at best a variant within global capitalism. This paper discusses heterodox theories that position China as part of global capitalism or regard it as a variety of capitalism. It then examines the anomalies of Chinese "capitalism" and suggests that primitive socialist accumulation—operating in conflict with capitalist accumulation—offers a more appropriate theoretical framework for studying China's development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the pricing of market volatility risk as a risk factor—the innovation risk and as a characteristic risk—the level risk. We find that the pricing of the country‐level (local) market volatility risk factor is not robust across 21 developed markets and that the global market volatility risk factor prices 21 developed market portfolios after controlling for global market, value, and size factors. Capturing various market information, idiosyncratic market volatility as a country‐specific characteristic risk dominates global market, value, size, and market volatility risk factors in predicting returns of market portfolios. Countries with higher investor protection and accounting standards have higher country‐specific market volatility. Market volatility is higher in these countries because corporate managers take higher risks on innovative projects that benefit economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I study a mechanism design problem in which a designer allocates a single good to one of several agents, and the mechanism is followed by an aftermarket—a post‐mechanism game played between the agent who acquired the good and third‐party market participants. The designer has preferences over final outcomes, but she cannot design the aftermarket. However, she can influence its information structure by publicly disclosing information elicited from the agents by the mechanism. I introduce a class of allocation and disclosure rules, called cutoff rules, that disclose information about the buyer's type only by revealing information about the realization of a random threshold (cutoff) that she had to outbid to win the object. When there is a single agent in the mechanism, I show that the optimal cutoff mechanism offers full privacy to the agent. In contrast, when there are multiple agents, the optimal cutoff mechanism may disclose information about the winner's type; I provide sufficient conditions for optimality of simple designs. I also characterize aftermarkets for which restricting attention to cutoff mechanisms is without loss of generality in a subclass of all feasible mechanisms satisfying additional conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate how investor overconfidence and attention affect market efficiency around the 2015 Chinese stock market crash. We find that the price delay before the crash is about twice the price delay after the crash. Investors become more sensitive to market movements after the crash. Price delays are larger on market down‐days than on up‐days before the crash, but the differences are insignificant between up‐ and down‐days after the crash, indicating that negative information travels slowly only when investors are overconfident. Margin traders follow market trends and intensify the pyramiding and de‐pyramiding effects caused by market sentiment change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Property catastrophe re/insurance plays a crucial yet underexplored role in the governance of disparate geographies of risk. This article extends the concept of the riskscape to the study of re/insurance in two ways. We first develop a four-part framework for understanding re/insurance markets as a series of conjoined riskscapes. Second, we apply this approach to a case study analysis of Florida's hurricane wind re/insurance market and its restructuring after the destructive 2004/2005 hurricane seasons. Using this riskscapes framework and the Florida case, we advance a critical geographical understanding of re/insurance markets as conjunctural and open-ended political economic projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, the secondary-ticket market for sporting events, concerts, and the like entailed hollering scalpers perched outside of venues. Though this practice has not been entirely extinguished, the internet has largely moved the secondary-ticket market online to websites like StubHub, the largest player in this arena. Instead of yelling loudest or finding the best real estate outside a stadium from which to perch, the modern ticket scalper competes most effectively in the secondary-ticket market by finding ways to access primary tickets online. By using ticket "bots," programs designed to autofill customer information and solve CAPTCHA prompts, modern scalpers can quickly purchase large quantities of tickets from primary-market sites like Ticketmaster. The goal of the modern scalper is the same as the goal of the hollering scalper of the past: to resell these tickets for a marked-up price. States have responded to modern bots-based ticket resales with the whole gamut of legislation, ranging from no regulation, to disallowing online ticket bots, to wholesalers banning ticket resale altogether. Congress upended states' disparate approaches in 2016 with the enactment of the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, which effectively prohibits the use of bots for online ticket resale and charges the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with its enforcement. The problem, however, is that the BOTS Act attacks a nonexistent boogeyman. Neither ticket bots nor the modern scalper creates marked-up ticket prices in the secondary market; consumer demand does. Moreover, consumers have no right to attain underpriced tickets. On the flip side, performers and sports teams have every right to set prices as they see fit. Every day, the FTC prosecutes bad actors who defraud the elderly of their savings, deliberately fool consumers into believing falsehoods about a product (like sham dietary supplements), and trick people into believing celebrities endorse scam-centered products. These are legitimate consumer harms. Purchasing tickets--with full information and disclosures--on the secondary market at prices higher than one wishes to pay is not the sort of fraudulent activity that the FTC should be forced to police as "consumer protection." Accordingly, this Note argues that the BOTS Act should be repealed or, at a minimum, removed from the FTC's consumer-protection apparatus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian smartphone industry is the world’s second largest market for smartphones after China. It is a perfect example of an industry subject to the conditions of hypercompetition. Companies, existing and new, need to formulate and implement unique and innovative strategies to survive under such turbulent conditions. This paper aims at suggesting suitable strategies that can be employed by companies in the Indian smartphone industry to cope with hypercompetition and create a sustainable competitive advantage for themselves. Using multiple case studies analysis of the top four brands, i.e., Xiaomi, Samsung, Vivo, and Oppo, it has been suggested that ‘a set of strategies’ should be carefully formulated and properly implemented by the companies to ensure their survival and growth in the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information technology has transformed multiple industries with startlingly rapid progress. Banking is one of the industries which is determinedly using information technologies to automate many of its services. One such area that got transformed is the way money was transferred. With the advent of digital wallets, there has been a dramatic shift in payment method preferences and behaviour. The present research paper studies the behaviour and preferences of digital wallet users across various age groups. The data was collected from 101 respondents from four different age groups using structured questionnaire. The data was analysed using tests like cross-tabulation, Leven statistics and ANOVA. The researchers found that Google Pay was the most preferred digital wallet followed by Paytm and PhonePe. Google Pay was successful in capturing significant market even after coming late into the market. Most users of digital wallets use it for bookings, bill payments, fees payments and transportation payments. It was found that respondents believe that digital wallets are safe to use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A software system deals with various security implications after its release in the market. Correspondingly, firm releases security patches to counter those flaws discovered in the software system. A vendor releases a patch only if a vulnerability has been discovered in a software. It is an important aspect that encompasses the prediction of potential number of patches to be released to maintain the stability of a software. Vulnerability Discovery Models (VDMs) help a software vendor to acknowledge the security trends, forecast security investments and to plan patches, but very few attempts have been made to model the Vulnerability Patch Modeling (VPM) based on the impact of vulnerabilities discovered over the time period. In this proposal, we deduce a novel approach that addresses trend in the sequential development of patches based on the vendor or reporters fetching out the vulnerabilities in a software. The vulnerability trends in a software significantly affect the discovery process and later trigger a patch deployment to suppress the possible likelihood of a breach. The integrative approach underlines the association of vulnerability patch modeling with the vulnerability discovery phenomenon. To exemplify the proposed systematic structure, a statistical analysis has been conducted using real life vulnerability and patch datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to examine the changes that have occurred after Poland's integration into the European Union (EU) internal market for services after 2004 considering the legal changes adopted in the EU relating to the free movement of services, namely, the Service Directive. An examination of the Directive's outcome and the development of the market integration process permit the conclusion that the changes in regulatory trade barriers have had a relatively limited impact on the changes that have occurred in EU–Polish ties concerning services trade. These were predominantly shaped by structural and macroeconomic factors. From an analysis of the structure of Poland's services trade, a picture emerges of a deepening asymmetry between the exports and imports sides of Poland's participation in the internal market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article constructs China VIX with ETFs option data from SSE, HKEx, and CBOE, and investigates the corresponding volatility premiums and volatility term structures. We find that China's volatility premiums exist in all the three markets with a specific pattern during and after the market crash, and they are highly similar and correlated. This pattern shows that volatility premiums are significantly negative during market crash and quickly rise to a large positive number after the crash, and then slowly decay until next crisis. Moreover, it suggests that investors should short volatility after market collapse rather than long it like most market participants did in the past. Despite the three volatility term structures show that implied volatilities generally decrease with the increasing of terms and rise sharply near the maturity dates, there is no such obvious pattern in the volatility term structure of SSE 50 ETF options due to the extremely imperfection of China's option market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]