Raad, James Elias2023-06-012023-06-012023-05-31vt_gsexam:37815http://hdl.handle.net/10919/115277The hospitality industry is characterized by a close interdependence between retailers and suppliers. Retailers depend on suppliers to provide the necessary goods and services to operate effectively, while suppliers rely on retailers to buy and market their products. With intense competition in the industry, effective supplier selection has become a critical asset for companies. Traditional supply chain management approaches that focus solely on increasing economic value are insufficient in the face of growing pressure for socially and environmentally responsible business practices. As a result, new criteria, including environmental, social, political, and customer satisfaction considerations, have been added to the pre-existing factors in supplier selection. While restaurants strive to select suppliers who meet their quality, social, and environmental standards, these suppliers may still face internal issues such as food safety, ethical malpractice, environmental concerns, and human rights issues. When such issues arise, it is unclear whether customers hold restaurants accountable for the mistakes of their suppliers, even when the restaurant has not been directly involved in these issues. The first part of this dissertation aims to explore how consumers associate negative news about supplier food quality and practices with the restaurants they patronize. By doing so, this study contributes to a better understanding of the indirect link between supplier issues and restaurant market value. On another note, Online Travel Agents (OTAs) play an important intermediary role in the two-sided travel distribution market. A critical factor that enhances a firm's competitive advantage is innovation. Yet, the analysis of innovation in the OTA context is scarce. The main objective of the second part of this dissertation is to fill this gap and examine the effect of OTA innovations on firm performance. We analyze the effect of two-sided market specific innovations (same-side and cross-side) on performance and contribute to the literature by expanding the theoretical understanding of innovations. We find that producer-to-consumer innovations have a greater effect on OTA performance than producer-to-producer and consumer-to-consumer innovations. A fundamental managerial implication is that exchange management is an area to be enhanced when innovating in travel market distribution. Lastly, with the unprecedented increase in food delivery demand due to the new consumption habits of individuals, delivery pricing is an issue to consider keeping consumers happy and continuously demanding this service. Research in economics and in service marketing have described how consumers do recognize the "free" under a product's price differently. This pricing approach is based upon that widespread notion that providing free goods or services to customers adds value to them and so increases their desire to buy. In the last part of the dissertation, we study the Zero price model on a multicomponent product with Food being the first component (where its price is always positive) and the delivery service as the second (where its price will eventually hit the zero-price tag). Elaborating more on previous studies and filling their gaps, we will be dividing the zero-price model into three scenarios: The true free scenario, the true free scenario with different discounts, and the fake-free scenario as each one is expected to yield different consumer behaviors in the process, but all should act similarly when the price hits the "free" tag.ETDenIn CopyrightSupplier IssuesInnovationOTAsTwo-Sided MarketsFood DeliveryZero-Price ModelEvent StudyDissertation