SE Abu Dhabi Aptian 5 Shuaiba System: Understanding a Heterogeneous Reservoir Trend

The study area covers 1,300 km2 in southeastern Abu Dhabi and focuses on the Aptian (Apt.) 5 Upper Shuaiba progradational clinoform system. The Shuaiba Formation has been well-studied at the regional level, but with comparatively less focus on the Apt. 5 system. Studying depositional trends and shoal facies distributions within the Apt. 5 is critical for predicting reservoir presence and quality. Given the complexity of the Apt. 5 system, understanding the key controls over depositional environments, such as paleowind direction, is an important first step. This study combined regional context and geological understanding with previous studies to confirm existing clinoform interpretation, while also delineating four additional clinoform sequences using a reprocessed depth migrated 3-D seismic volume. Isochron maps were also used to group clinoforms into three packages distinguished by common morphologies possibly linked to their respective dominant reservoir facies. Preliminary observations suggest early clinoforms had more rudist build-ups, whereas the later clinoforms were dominated by narrow-shoal beaches. Coalescing clinoform shoal patterns, observed in the spectral decomposition and amplitude extraction maps, likely result from a combination of Bab Basin morphology, longshore current, and dominant paleowind direction during the Early to Middle Cretaceous. Existing interpretations of dominant paleowind direction vary significantly, ranging between E-W and S-N. Interpretations from this study are most consistent with prevailing paleowind out of the east-southeast. The Arabian plate was likely near the equator around 10°S latitude during the Aptian, which supports the southeast wind hypothesis when considering modern Coriolis patterns. Consistent wind influence on shallow water shoal environments would have winnowed mud and increased the proportion of grain-dominated sediment preserved relative to lower energy areas. The grain-dominated facies appear to be reflected in amplitude responses around the coalescing clinoforms, and in the amplitude variations along strike coincident with clinoform edges. Reservoir presence and quality uncertainty can be reduced if these observations can be confirmed. An improved understanding of the Apt. 5 clinoform system in southeast Abu Dhabi, and possible influences on reservoir distribution and quality, will help develop a better understanding of risk for prospect maturation.

Signaling Quality with Return Insurance: Theory and Empirical Evidence

This paper examines an innovative return policy, return insurance, emerging on various shopping platforms such as Taobao.com and JD.com. Return insurance is underwritten by an insurer and can be purchased by either a retailer or a consumer. Under such insurance, the insurer partially compensates consumers for their hassle costs associated with product return. We analyze the informational roles of return insurance when product quality is the retailer’s private information, consumers infer quality from the retailer’s price and insurance adoption, and the insurer strategically chooses insurance premiums. We show that return insurance can be an effective signal of high quality. When consumers have little confidence about high quality and expect a significant gap between high and low qualities, a high-quality retailer can be differentiated from a low-quality retailer solely through its adoption of return insurance. We confirm, both analytically and empirically with a data set consisting of more than 10,000 sellers on JD.com, that return insurance is more likely adopted by higher-quality sellers under information asymmetry. Furthermore, we find that the presence of the third party (i.e., the insurer) leads to double marginalization in signaling, which strengthens a signal’s differentiating power and sometimes renders return insurance a preferred signal, in comparison with free return, whereby retailers directly compensate for consumers’ return hassles. As an effective and costly signal of quality, return insurance may also improve consumer surplus and reduce product returns. Its profit advantage to the insurer is most pronounced under significant quality uncertainty. This paper was accepted by Vishal Gaur, operations management.

Auctioning IT Contracts with Renegotiable Scope

Motivated by challenges facing IT procurement, this paper studies a hybrid procurement model in which a reverse auction of a fixed-price IT outsourcing contract may be followed by renegotiation to extend the contract’s scope. In this model, the buyer balances the needs to incentivize noncontractible vendor investment and to curb the winning vendor’s information rent by choosing the initial project scope and the buyer’s investment in the quality of the project. We find that a buyer may benefit from inducing ex post renegotiation to motivate vendor investment, especially when the winning vendor has high bargaining power and the quality uncertainty is low. Broadening the initial scope reduces information rent but leaves little room for ex post renegotiation and, hence, discourages vendor investment, whereas increasing the buyer’s investment has opposite effects. Interestingly, the two measures can be strategic substitutes or complements depending on the likelihood of the renegotiation and the two parties’ bargaining powers. The buyer may strategically set a low initial project scope and high investment to incentivize renegotiation and vendor investment, which may explain why many IT outsourcing projects start small and allow expansions. Our findings also generate several testable predictions for IT outsourcing. This paper was accepted by Kartik Hosanagar, information systems.

Brand implications of advertising products with their reflections

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of advertising products with their reflections on some important brand outcomes such as brand purchase likelihood, brand trust and consumer willingness to pay for the advertised product. Design/methodology/approach This research uses four experiments to assess the effects of advertising products with (vs without) reflections on the focal brand outcomes. Findings Results evidence a robust negative effect of advertising products with their reflections on the investigated brand outcomes across multiple product categories. Following Signaling Theory, product reflections are found to act as negative signaling devices in brand advertising contexts given that these inverted, false object reproductions are processed with a sense of confusion, ambiguity and uncertainty. Further in line with Signaling Theory, increased product quality uncertainty is determined as the underlying process and brand confidence signaling is tested as a relevant moderator to the proposed effects. Originality/value This inquiry is the first to systemically investigate brand implications of advertising products with their reflections. Counter to marketers’ aesthetic intuitions, the current research finds that this common advertising practice can actually hurt critical brand outcomes such as brand trust.

Implication of quality uncertainty on market exchange: The case of seed industry in Kilolo district, Tanzania.

An increasing demand of agricultural intensification and value addition necessitates the use of improved inputs such as improved seed. Smallholder farmers contribute about 70% of agricultural production in Tanzania. Agriculture sector in Tanzania contributes about 24.1% of the GDP, 30% of exports and 65% of industrial raw materials. Thus, agriculture development, economic growth and industrialization are inseparable. Due to the nature of the product, smallholder farmers cannot judge the overall excellence of seed at the time of buying. This paper assessed quality uncertainty in maize and vegetable seed and its implication for market exchange between farmers and seed sellers in Kilolo district, Iringa Tanzania. The study used a random sample of 130 smallholder farmers and representatives from ten seed companies. Asymmetric information prevails between the two trading sides i.e. sellers and buyers leading into quality uncertainty. Moreover, product augmentation is profoundly overlooked whereby most of seed companies have not augmented their products. Because an improved seed is a quintessential example of an experience good, quality uncertainty of some crop varieties under field conditions favored some seed brands to be used more by farmers compared to others. This paper offers a thorough deduction on quality uncertainty under farmers’ field condition and its implication on market exchange. It adds information in the body of knowledge on how an improved seed can contribute to sustainable production of food and industrial raw materials, which is a step towards desired industrialization agenda in Tanzania.

Competitive Entry of Information Goods Under Quality Uncertainty

When confronted with a new product, consumers often find it difficult to predict how it will perform, and such uncertainty reduces consumers’ willingness to adopt the product. In this paper, we consider a market whereby consumers decide when and which product to buy, given that they know the product quality of the incumbent but are uncertain about that of the entrant. We investigate how consumer uncertainty about product quality affects firms’ behavior-based pricing and customer acquisition and retention dynamics. Using a two-period vertical model, we find that, under high-end encroachment, an increase in consumer uncertainty reduces the entrant’s profit and hurts the incumbent’s profit when the quality differential between the products is relatively small, whereas, under low-end encroachment, increasing uncertainty not only benefits the incumbent but also can favor the entrant. An important implication for entrants is that the marketing activities, which aim to reduce consumer uncertainty about product functionalities, may fail to improve profitability. We also find that the entrant lowers the price for uninformed customers and raises the price for repeat buyers under high-end encroachment but lowers the price for all customers under low-end encroachment. We further examine the subsidy strategy and show that, when the entrant’s product has a significant quality advantage and consumer uncertainty is high but not very high, the optimal strategy for the entrant is to acquire all consumers who do not buy from the incumbent by providing subsidies and to drop the low-valuation customers by means of a high price after their uncertainty is resolved.