Increasingly, suppliers are being tasked to spend large amounts of time with strategic customers in order to promote effective knowledge sharing and coordination between supply chain members. Suppliers are also expected to deal with added pressures on their time from increasing workloads, unanticipated problems and changing priorities. Psychology research suggests that individuals (e.g., supplier personnel) cope with such time pressure by either working faster or avoiding risks. Existing research, however, has largely ignored the impact of these time pressure coping mechanisms (TPCMs) in interactive contexts such as buyer-supplier relationships. This study develops the notion that TPCMs impact knowledge sharing in buyer-supplier relationships. Specifically, results from a between subjects scenario-based experiment indicate that suppliers using TPCMs decrease a buyer's willingness to share knowledge and exchange information. Such adverse effects are most evident in close collaborative buyer-supplier relationships. These findings advance theory and provide insight for managers seeking to improve knowledge sharing through buyer-supplier relationships in today's time-constrained business environment.

Technological advances enable companies to offer information products such as books, music, and movies in electronic formats, in addition to the traditional physical formats. Although one format may appear more useful and be preferred, consumers may be enticed to consider the unique attributes of all formats if they deliver equally well on salient attributes. The authors investigate the impact of usage situations, relative attribute quality levels of the formats and their interactions on the perception of the formats as perfect or imperfect substitutes or complements, and the purchase likelihood of the bundle of formats. The study demonstrates that when formats have equivalent quality on a salient attribute, consumers perceive the formats as more complementary and are more likely to buy the bundle. This happens because consumers consider more usage situations for the formats and view the bundle as providing greater flexibility for future usages.

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For product categories such as cars, computers, vacation packages, and new homes, consumers usually choose not only the product itself, but also various options for the product. Sellers decide how to present these options to consumers, and they often sell options both individually and in bundles (mixed bundling). In this research, we examine how mixed bundling affects consumers' inferences about the options and choices among the options. We demonstrate that as long as the seller's motives for bundling options are not perceived to be negative by consumers, options offered both individually and in bundles are perceived to be more important and are more likely to be chosen than options offered only individually.