UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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    THE IMPACT OF PRODUCT VARIETY ON RETAILER OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE AND SALES: EVIDENCE FROM CHINA.
    (2015) Sweeney, Kevin Donald; Windle, Robert J; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Providing higher levels of product variety has long been shown to generate increased revenues for both retail and manufacturing firms. However, recent research has also shown that higher levels of product variety can have a negative impact on firm operational performance. This dissertation is a two essay study using archival data provided by a single retail firm based in Shanghai, China, on the effects of product variety on retailer inventory levels, stock out rates, and sales. The first essay examines how product variety, as measured by the number of SKUs carried in the retailer’s product category assortment, affects inventory levels, stock out rates, and sales. The second essay investigates whether different types of product variety (namely brands, sizes, and product lines) impacts store inventory levels, stock out rates, and sales differently. The first essay investigates how the size of the product assortment impacts inventory levels, stock out rates, and sales. Greater product variety has the potential to generate higher revenue for the retailer, but also brings the potential for more complications in inventory and supply chain management processes. While previous research has examined this relationship within a manufacturing context, no research has investigated the tradeoff in a retail context. Also, this research is the first to consider the impact of product variety on a firm’s inventory levels. This is an important inclusion as inventory levels directly impact the stock out rate of a retailer. Furthermore, this paper investigates whether characteristics of a product category, such as the hedonic or utilitarian nature of the product category, moderate the relationship between product variety, operational performance, and sales. Using simultaneous equations and a three stage least squares regression methodology, results suggest that product variety has a positive relationship with inventory levels, stock out rates, and sales. Finally, the relationship between a product categories’ stock out rate and sales is stronger for hedonic product categories than utilitarian product categories. In the second essay, this dissertation examines whether the relationship between product variety, inventory levels, stock out rates and sales differs between different types of product variety. In particular, this essay investigates whether brand variety has a larger impact on retailer inventory levels, stock out rates, and sales than do size variety or product line variety. Again, using a simultaneous equation model and a three stage least squares methodology, the results suggest that brand variety is associated with higher inventory levels, lower stock out rates and higher sales than size or product line variety in the retail context.
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    PRODUCT VARIETY, SERVICE VARIETY, AND THEIR IMPACT ON DISTRIBUTORS
    (2011) Wan, Xiang; Dresner, Martin; Evers, Philip; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Despite considerable research relating to product variety, few studies have analyzed the impact of product variety on distributors. Furthermore, compared to research on product variety, service variety has been overlooked in the literature. This dissertation consists of three essays: Essay One examines the direct effect of product variety on sales, its indirect effect on sales through stockouts, as well as the total impact of product variety on sales performance. Essay Two develops a moderated mediation model to investigate how service quality and market performance are affected by service variety and the interaction impacts of different types of services. Essay Three analyzes a dynamic system, which includes influences of product and service variety on demand and costs and their reverse impacts on variety decisions.