IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v52y2006i3p465-471.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Research Note--Sell First, Fix Later: Impact of Patching on Software Quality

Author

Listed:
  • Ashish Arora

    (H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213)

  • Jonathan P. Caulkins

    (H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213)

  • Rahul Telang

    (H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213)

Abstract

We present a model of fixing or patching a software problem after the product has been released in the market. Specifically, we model a software firm's trade-off in releasing a buggy product early and investments in fixing it later. Just as the marginal cost of producing software can be effectively zero, so can the marginal cost of repairing multiple copies of defective software by issuing patches. We show that due to the fixed cost nature of investments in patching, a software vendor has incentives to release a buggier product early and patch it later in a larger market. Thus, a software monopolist releases a product with fewer bugs but later than what is socially optimal. We contrast this result with physical good markets where market size does not play any role in quality provision. We also show that for comparable costs, a software monopolist releases the product with more bugs but invests more in post-patching support later than the physical good monopolist.

Suggested Citation

  • Ashish Arora & Jonathan P. Caulkins & Rahul Telang, 2006. "Research Note--Sell First, Fix Later: Impact of Patching on Software Quality," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(3), pages 465-471, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:52:y:2006:i:3:p:465-471
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1050.0440
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1050.0440
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.1050.0440?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. M. S. Krishnan & C. H. Kriebel & Sunder Kekre & Tridas Mukhopadhyay, 2000. "An Empirical Analysis of Productivity and Quality in Software Products," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(6), pages 745-759, June.
    2. Rajiv D. Banker & Sandra A. Slaughter, 1997. "A Field Study of Scale Economies in Software Maintenance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(12), pages 1709-1725, December.
    3. Billie Jo Zirger & Modesto A. Maidique, 1990. "A Model of New Product Development: An Empirical Test," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(7), pages 867-883, July.
    4. Gary L. Lilien & Eunsang Yoon, 1990. "The Timing of Competitive Market Entry: An Exploratory Study of New Industrial Products," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(5), pages 568-585, May.
    5. K. Sridhar Moorthy, 1988. "Product and Price Competition in a Duopoly," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 7(2), pages 141-168.
    6. Morris A. Cohen & Jehoshua Eliasberg & Teck-Hua Ho, 1996. "New Product Development: The Performance and Time-to-Market Tradeoff," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(2), pages 173-186, February.
    7. Jarrell, Gregg & Peltzman, Sam, 1985. "The Impact of Product Recalls on the Wealth of Sellers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(3), pages 512-536, June.
    8. Kevin B. Hendricks & Vinod R. Singhal, 1997. "Delays in New Product Introductions and the Market Value of the Firm: The Consequences of Being Late to the Market," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(4), pages 422-436, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wang, Yu & Li, Minqiang & Feng, Haiyang & Feng, Nan, 2023. "Which is better for competing firms with quality increasing: behavior-based price discrimination or uniform pricing?," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    2. Ravi Sen & Joobin Choobineh & Subodha Kumar, 2020. "Determinants of Software Vulnerability Disclosure Timing," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(11), pages 2532-2552, November.
    3. Vidyanand Choudhary & Zhe (James) Zhang, 2015. "Research Note—Patching the Cloud: The Impact of SaaS on Patching Strategy and the Timing of Software Release," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 26(4), pages 845-858, December.
    4. Arora, Ashish & Forman, Chris & Nandkumar, Anand & Telang, Rahul, 2010. "Competition and patching of security vulnerabilities: An empirical analysis," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 164-177, May.
    5. Anshul Tickoo & P. K. Kapur & A. K. Shrivastava & Sunil K. Khatri, 2016. "Testing effort based modeling to determine optimal release and patching time of software," International Journal of System Assurance Engineering and Management, Springer;The Society for Reliability, Engineering Quality and Operations Management (SREQOM),India, and Division of Operation and Maintenance, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden, vol. 7(4), pages 427-434, December.
    6. Debabrata Dey & Atanu Lahiri & Guoying Zhang, 2015. "Optimal Policies for Security Patch Management," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 27(3), pages 462-477, August.
    7. Dawoon Jung & Byung Cho Kim & Myungsub Park & Detmar W. Straub, 2019. "Innovation and Policy Support for Two-Sided Market Platforms: Can Government Policy Makers and Executives Optimize Both Societal Value and Profits?," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 30(3), pages 1037-1050, September.
    8. Laksana, Kamonkan & Hartman, Joseph C., 2010. "Planning product design refreshes with service contract and competition considerations," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 189-203, August.
    9. Zhong-Zhong Jiang & Na He & Xuwei Qin & Minghe Sun & Pengfei Wang, 2022. "Optimizing production and maintenance for the service-oriented manufacturing supply chain," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 316(1), pages 33-58, September.
    10. Yuchen Zhang & Jingjing Li & Tony W. Tong, 2022. "Platform governance matters: How platform gatekeeping affects knowledge sharing among complementors," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(3), pages 599-626, March.
    11. Gabriel A. Giménez Roche & Didier Calcei, 2021. "The role of demand routines in entrepreneurial judgment," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 209-235, January.
    12. Zhengrui Jiang & Sumit Sarkar & Varghese S. Jacob, 2012. "Postrelease Testing and Software Release Policy for Enterprise-Level Systems," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 23(3-part-1), pages 635-657, September.
    13. Ashish Arora & Ramayya Krishnan & Rahul Telang & Yubao Yang, 2010. "An Empirical Analysis of Software Vendors' Patch Release Behavior: Impact of Vulnerability Disclosure," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 21(1), pages 115-132, March.
    14. Terrence August & Marius Florin Niculescu, 2013. "The Influence of Software Process Maturity and Customer Error Reporting on Software Release and Pricing," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(12), pages 2702-2726, December.
    15. Yogita Kansal & Gurinder Singh & Uday Kumar & P. K. Kapur, 2016. "Optimal release and patching time of software with warranty," International Journal of System Assurance Engineering and Management, Springer;The Society for Reliability, Engineering Quality and Operations Management (SREQOM),India, and Division of Operation and Maintenance, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden, vol. 7(4), pages 462-468, December.
    16. Karthik Kannan & Mohammad S. Rahman & Mohit Tawarmalani, 2016. "Economic and Policy Implications of Restricted Patch Distribution," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(11), pages 3161-3182, November.
    17. Terrence August & Tunay I. Tunca, 2008. "Let the Pirates Patch? An Economic Analysis of Software Security Patch Restrictions," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 19(1), pages 48-70, March.
    18. Cornelius Fritz & Co-Pierre Georg & Angelo Mele & Michael Schweinberger, 2024. "A Strategic Model of Software Dependency Networks," Papers 2402.13375, arXiv.org.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ted Klastorin & Weiyu Tsai, 2004. "New Product Introduction: Timing, Design, and Pricing," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 6(4), pages 302-320, August.
    2. Ilan Lobel & Jigar Patel & Gustavo Vulcano & Jiawei Zhang, 2016. "Optimizing Product Launches in the Presence of Strategic Consumers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(6), pages 1778-1799, June.
    3. Armstrong, Michael J & Levesque, Moren, 2002. "Timing and quality decisions for entrepreneurial product development," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 141(1), pages 88-106, August.
    4. Kevin B. Hendricks & Vinod R. Singhal, 2008. "The Effect of Product Introduction Delays on Operating Performance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(5), pages 878-892, May.
    5. Agam Gupta & Arqum Mateen & Divya Sharma & Uttam K. Sarkar & Vinu Cheruvil Thomas, 2019. "Combating incumbency advantage of network effects: The role of entrant’s decisions and consumer preferences," Competition and Regulation in Network Industries, , vol. 20(1), pages 3-32, March.
    6. Yixin Qiu & Anandasivam Gopal & Il-Horn Hann, 2017. "Logic Pluralism in Mobile Platform Ecosystems: A Study of Indie App Developers on the iOS App Store," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 28(2), pages 225-249, June.
    7. R. Mark Krankel & Izak Duenyas & Roman Kapuscinski, 2006. "Timing Successive Product Introductions with Demand Diffusion and Stochastic Technology Improvement," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 8(2), pages 119-135, June.
    8. Paulson Gjerde, Kathy A. & Slotnick, Susan A., 2004. "Quality and reputation: The effects of external and internal factors over time," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 1-20, May.
    9. Rodríguez-Pinto, Javier & Carbonell, Pilar & Rodríguez-Escudero, Ana I., 2011. "Speed or quality? How the order of market entry influences the relationship between market orientation and new product performance," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 145-154.
    10. Rupak Rauniar & Greg Rawski & Donald Hudson, 2017. "Antecedents And Consequences Of Ippd Effectiveness," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 21(07), pages 1-38, October.
    11. April M. Franco & MB Sarkar & Rajshree Agarwal & Raj Echambadi, 2009. "Swift and Smart: The Moderating Effects of Technological Capabilities on the Market Pioneering-Firm Survival Relationship," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(11), pages 1842-1860, November.
    12. Wu, Cheng-Han & Lai, Jing-Yi, 2019. "Dynamic pricing and competitive time-to-market strategy of new product launch under a multistage duopoly," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 277(1), pages 138-152.
    13. MATHUR Sameer & DEWANI Prem Prakash, 2015. "Market Entry, Product Quality And Price Competition," Studies in Business and Economics, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Faculty of Economic Sciences, vol. 10(2), pages 62-82, August.
    14. Kai-Lung Hui & Qiu-Hong Wang, 2005. "Delayed Product Introduction," Industrial Organization 0503011, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Manuel Hermosilla, 2021. "Rushed Innovation: Evidence from Drug Licensing," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(1), pages 257-278, January.
    16. V. Krishnan & Karl T. Ulrich, 2001. "Product Development Decisions: A Review of the Literature," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(1), pages 1-21, January.
    17. Scott A. Shane & Karl T. Ulrich, 2004. "50th Anniversary Article: Technological Innovation, Product Development, and Entrepreneurship in Management Science," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(2), pages 133-144, February.
    18. Hao Zhao, 2003. "R&D Competition Between an Incumbent and an Entrant: An Integrated Model of R&D Investment, Performance Improvement, and Time-to-Market," Review of Marketing Science Working Papers 2-2-1023, Berkeley Electronic Press.
    19. Rajiv D. Banker & Robert J. Kauffman, 2004. "50th Anniversary Article: The Evolution of Research on Information Systems: A Fiftieth-Year Survey of the Literature in Management Science," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(3), pages 281-298, March.
    20. Glen M. Schmidt & Evan L. Porteus, 2000. "Sustaining Technology Leadership Can Require Both Cost Competence and Innovative Competence," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 2(1), pages 1-18, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:52:y:2006:i:3:p:465-471. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.