Logistics, Business & Public Policy
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Item PROMOTING SAFETY IN FOOD SUPPLY CHAINS: NAVIGATING REGULATIONS, INSPECTOR SCHEDULES, AND INCENTIVE STRUCTURES(2024) Grover, Abhay Kumar; Dresner, Martin E; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The dissertation examines different aspects around safety in U.S. food supply chains, using the context of regulatory policy implementation and inspections. The first essay explores the impact of supply chain accountability regulations on firm level inventory performance within the context of global sourcing. Using the case of the Food Safety Modernization Act, the study suggests that regulatory policies have the potential to negatively impact a firm’s inventory performance by increasing regulatory stress. Using the stress-coping theory, the study finds that sourcing from developed markets exacerbates the regulatory stress, while sourcing from emerging markets alleviates it, thus altering the firm’s coping response as reflected by its inventory leanness performance. The essay has implications for safety in food supply chains. The second essay investigates the impact of work-break schedules on task performance of field staff. Using the context of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory inspections, the study explores different work-break regimes and their impact on food inspectors’ quality assessments of food facilities. The study finds that temporal pacing of inspections increases task performance, but at a diminishing rate. Multi-tasking and non-standard schedules negatively affect performance, while intermittent breaks and start-day of inspections may have a positive effect on inspection outcomes. Strategic scheduling of inspections may increase violation detection. The third essay investigates the impact of incentive design on task performance of field staff. Using the context of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory inspections, the study explores how salary differences relative to multiple referent groups impact food inspectors’ quality assessment of food facilities. Grounded in equity theory, the study finds that a higher salary as compared to previous year, internal peers, and operational interface referents, leads to work withdrawals due to complacency. Conversely, a higher salary as compared to industry referents enhances inspector task performance. A strategic incentive design for inspectors may increase the detection of violations. These studies contribute to the literature at the intersection of supply chain and operations management, public policy, and public sector operations. They do so by advancing our understanding of the factors affecting safety in food supply chains.Item THREE ESSAYS IN HUMANITARIAN OPERATIONS: PREPARATION AND RESPONSE TO DISASTERS(2024) Sabol, Matthew; Dresner, Martin; Evers, Philip; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Three essays related to humanitarian operations are examined. The first essay addresses the impact of humanitarian operations on recovery from disasters. Event study methodology is used to demonstrate the economic impact of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) disaster recovery operations on economic recovery. The second essay examines how political considerations can impact government response to natural disasters. Based on theories of public choice and congressional dominance, models are formulated and fixed-effects regressions are used to examine the impact of political alignment and control on government-led humanitarian response. The third essay provides a comparative analysis among four inventory management methods used to prepare for humanitarian operations, under conditions of uncertain demand. Demands for key materials are simulated, based on data from the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), relevant to humanitarian operations. General propositions are formulated for inventory managers in preparation for humanitarian operations.Item DELIVERY PLATFORMS: DO THEY DELIVER RESULTS?(2022) PARK, HYOSOO Kevin; Dresner, Martin; Pan, Xiaodan; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Over the past decade, direct-to-consumer retail deliveries have increased significantly, bolstered by the development of dedicated restaurant and retailer delivery platforms. This dissertation, composed of three essays, examines topics related to the performance of delivery platforms and their retail partners.The first essay compares the impact of delivery partnerships and in-house delivery capabilities on the direct channel sales of restaurant chains. Furthermore, the moderating effects of containment and health measures imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic are examined. I find that delivery platform partnerships and in-house deliveries both positively impact restaurant sales. However, as containment and health measures increase, impacts from delivery platforms wane. Conversely, in-house delivery becomes more beneficial at impacting restaurant sales as containment and health measures increase. In the second essay, I analyze how delivery platform partnerships affect the sales of both grocery retailers and delivery platforms. Two distinct partnerships stages are assessed: 1) platform access, where a grocery retailer’s same-day delivery is only offered through a partner platform’s website, and 2) usage integration, where the platform’s same-day delivery services are integrated into the retailer’s website. I find that platform access provides positive impacts for online sales of both the retailer and the delivery platform. However, usage integration, the second level of the partnership integration, provides benefits to the retailer’s online channel but not to the platform channel. The third essay analyzes how delivery platform partnerships impact retailer and delivery platform sales and how vertical integration between the two partners moderates these relationships. I find that delivery platform partnerships have a positive effect on both retailer and delivery platform sales. However, these positive impacts depend on whether the two partners are vertically integrated. Without a common ownership structure, delivery platform sales crowd out retailer store sales. Likewise, retailer sales crowd out delivery platform sales without vertical integration.Item The Competition on Online Marketplaces(2022) Su, Hao; Dresner, Martin E.; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines competition in online marketplaces using data from the largest online marketplace in the U.S., Amazon.com. The first essay studies direct sales competition between a marketplace operator and third parties that sell their products on the marketplace and examines factors that third-party sellers may use to avoid direct competition with the marketplace operator. I find that third-party sellers can best avoid competing directly with Amazon by selling unbranded products and by marketing products that are fulfilled by Amazon. The second essay investigates competitive results between the marketplace operator and third-party sellers. I find that despite inherent competitive disadvantages, third-party sellers may increase their likelihood of winning the sales competition against the marketplace operator when they offer a lower price than the marketplace operator and when they use the marketplace operator’s fulfillment services. In addition, a third-party seller using direct fulfillment is less likely to outcompete a seller using operator-managed fulfillment services, but it can be more competitive when it offers lower prices and when it sells low-priced products. The third essay investigates how employment of the marketplace’s store banner impacts sales performance for both private label products and non-private label products on an online marketplace. I find that directly branding private labels and using store banners on non-private label products are both associated with greater sales performance. In addition, lower-priced products and non-private label products may achieve greater benefits from store banners. The findings contribute to the online marketplace literature by empirically testing the impact of direct sales, fulfillment services, and store banner use on competition between a marketplace operator and third-party sellers. The findings also contribute to important antitrust considerations.Item SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTIONS: IMPACT ON COMPETITOR FIRMS AND THE INFLUENCE OF SUPPLY CHAIN COMPLEXITY ON DISRUPTION LIKELIHOOD AND RECOVERY TIME(2021) Guntuka, Laharish; Corsi, Thomas; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The two essays of this dissertation focus on supply chain disruptions, with first essay studying the impact of supply chain disruptions on the disrupted firm competitors and the second essay, examining the impact of supply chain complexity on the manufacturing plant’s recovery time from disruption. In Essay 1 of my dissertation, I investigate the horizontal spillover effects of supply chain disruptions to the disrupted firm’s competitors, anecdotal evidence for the relationship between bystander competitor firms’ financial performance and supply chain disruptions (SCDs) of a focal firm is equivocal. Past studies on this relationship have revealed mixed findings. I consider two potential sources of this ambiguity by examining a multitude of SCDs over a 13-year period (2003–2015). I examine the vertical interdependence among competitor firms, along with the visibilities of the disrupted firm, the undisrupted competitor firm, and the SCD event. I investigate the stock market reaction to bystander competitor firms after a focal firm SCD announcement. In addition, I measure operational performance of the bystander competitor firm measured through return on assets (ROA) in the period following a focal firm’s SCD announcement. I find that both performance measures show that bystander competitor firms are positively impacted when their competitor experiences an SCD. I also find that both measures are less positive when there is vertical interdependence between the competitors. These insights help firms to better assess the complexities of their supply chains as well as the connectivity to their competitors as sources of disruption risks. I also find that the stock market reaction is more positive when the event is visible, which suggests that high coverage of a disruptive event should signal a shifting momentum toward the undisrupted competitors. Finally, I find that the operational performance is less positive for very visible undisrupted competitor firms. The Essay 2 of my dissertation examines how supply chain complexity, an important structural characteristic of a supply chain structure, can impact a firm’s supply chain resiliency to a disruption. Many firms continue to struggle to proactively manage the potential sources of supply chain complexity associated with the sourcing, manufacturing, and logistics activities needed to meet customer demand. The purpose of this study, then, is to first, examine the impact of the uncertain environment of the focal site on the likelihood of a site experiencing a disruption. Specifically, I study the peer-to-peer learning from the environment in which the focal site is located. Then, I explore how structural characteristics of the focal site can affect its proactive strategies to avoid disruption along with reactive strategies that aid the site in its recovery process after the disruption. Because firms are increasingly exposed to multiple dimensions of complexity in their supply chain, I theorize on how internal and external structural characteristics impact the likelihood of disruption along with the recovery time if the site goes down due to disruption. Indeed, some firms may have a stronger ability to manage the complexity and risk present at their plant locations compared to the abilities of other firms to manage their complexity. Likewise, I closely look into the role of business continuity management (BCM) plans in the recovery process after disruption. In doing so, I examine the role of strategic, operational, and supplier orientation of BCM plans on the recovery time of the focal site.Item The Impact of Omnichannel Operations on Firm Performance(2020) Ren, Xinyi; Evers, Philip T; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the impact of two different omnichannel strategies that firms can undertake to maintain and expand their competitive positions. These strategies range from the integration of information provided across different channels to the establishment of a new brick-and-mortar (B&M) retail format. Specifically, my research questions center on how firms can benefit from omnichannel operations and the potential costs that come with these strategies. The underlying mechanisms between customer demand, order fulfillment, and inventory management are studied using econometric analysis and data analytics based on a large proprietary dataset collected from the retail industry. The first essay empirically examines the value of pop-up stores with respect to their ability to drive customer demand and fulfill orders. A comparison is also made between pop-up retailing and traditional “permanent” B&M retailing. Building on a quasi-field experiment, I find that having pop-up stores leads to an increase in the overall demand both during and after operations, indicating a spillover effect on demand that goes beyond the pop-up store's limited operational window. From a fulfillment perspective, customers shift from the online channel to pop-up stores when they have urgency in acquiring the purchase. Finally, the results reveal that pop-up stores are not as effective as permanent stores in generating demand; however, the trade-off between revenue and cost still makes pop-up stores an attractive retail format, especially when exploring markets with modest potential. The second essay demonstrates the impact of sharing B&M store product availability on a firm’s website. Specific attention is given to the scenario where a product assortment discrepancy exists across channels, which aligns with the trend of B&M stores getting smaller in order to reduce operational costs. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I find that this information integration strategy leads to an increase in overall sales. At a channel level, customers shift from the B&M channel to the online channel for a wider product selection, except when purchasing products that are associated with high uncertainty. I further evaluate whether the above effects are sensitive to customer-related characteristics and find that both customer distance to store and customer basket size affect the way one responds to the information about in-store product availability and the product assortment gap between channels.Item THE IMPACT OF EXECUTIVES WITH SUPPLY CHAIN AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE ON THE FIRM’S SUPPLY PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT AND INVENTORY INVESTMENTS(2020) DLima, Rohan Savio; Corsi, Thomas M; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The two essays of this dissertation focus on the influence of supply chain and operations management executives on the firm’s supply chain strategies. Essay 1 focuses on the differences in the supply chain and operations management role and investigates how these differences impact the firm’s supplier portfolio management strategies. Essay 2, in turn, investigates the impact of a chief supply chain officer on a firm’s inventory investment when the firm pursues a global sourcing strategy. Both Essays 1 and 2 leverage archival data and econometric data analysis to further the debate in supply chain and operations management research. Essay 1 of the dissertation is grounded in upper echelons theory (UET) and analyzes how differences in the supply chain and operations managers on the firm’s top management team (TMT) impact the firm’s strategic supplier portfolio management (SPM). Strategic SPM requires the firm to set up plans for its supply base as a whole as well as the individual relationships with its suppliers. Two of the key aspects of this are the firm’s geographic sourcing strategy that impacts the firm’s supply base and the firm’s supplier relationship strategy that impacts the firm’s relationships with its individual suppliers. These strategic choices impact the firm’s supply chain and operations and will thus be influenced by the supply chain and operations managers on the firm’s TMT. At the same time, the main difference between supply chain management and operations management lies in the focus of each of these disciplines – operations management emphasizes optimizing the firm’s internal cross-functional processes, while supply chain management centers on optimizing processes within the context of the firm as a part of the whole supply chain. So, leveraging UET, I argue that these differences lead the supply chain and operations managers to significantly different strategic SPM decisions. To assess the validity of my claims, I use various econometric techniques to analyze a panel dataset of 14,530 observations of buyer-supplier dyads over four years. This panel dataset is based on consolidated data from Compustat, Bloomberg’s SPLC module and Bloomberg’s executive database. The results provide consistent support for the hypothesized theory that the differences in supply chain and operations management lead to significantly different outcomes. Essay 2 of my dissertation juxtaposes agency theory and upper echelons theory (UET) to analyze how a chief supply chain officer (CSCO) on a firm’s top management team impacts its inventory investment when it pursues a global sourcing strategy. Using Agency Theory, I argue that firm’s pursuing a global sourcing strategy are exposed to increased supply uncertainty from risk sharing and agency problems. This increased uncertainty leads to a need for increased inventory buffers. Next, supported by UET, I build my hypothesis that a CSCO on the TMT results in lower inventory investments by focusing on reducing the firm’s exposure to uncertainties. Furthermore, given their insights into supply chain relationships, CSCOs are uniquely suited to improve collaboration, coordination and information sharing with its global sourcing partners, leading to lower uncertainties and thus lower inventories. To assess the validity of my claims, I use different econometric techniques to analyze a panel dataset of 2,883 observations over five years. I assembled this panel dataset by consolidating data from Compustat, Bloomberg’s SPLC module and Bloomberg’s executive database. I demonstrate that firms with a chief supply chain officer on their TMT have lower inventory investments when the firm pursues a global sourcing strategy.Item Antecedents and Effects of Retail Shelf Availability(2019) Celebi, Heidi; Evers, Philip T; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Retail shelf availability research has been limited by the inability to measure stockouts. Not being able to fully capture stockout occurrences has led to studying either the effects of stockouts or their antecedents. It has also led to using various fundamentally different stockout attributes as measures across studies. The relationship between stockout attributes is not clear, making it difficult to have a consensus on either the drivers or the impact of stockouts. This thesis considers both antecedents and effects of stockouts by incorporating actual stockout events under two different risk pooling methods. The first set of models simulate stockout-based customer switching (the inventory effect) to study pooling by substitution for a retailer setting service level goals for two products. The second set of models study pooling by postponement, termed “instore logistics postponement,” using archival data from a new shelf sensor technology that captures actual stockout events. An extension to the second part of this study examines the nonlinear relationship between stockout attributes. Both parts of the dissertation contribute to the stockout literature in different ways. The simulation work contributes towards reconciling opposing views on the performance effect of risk pooling through substitution, also showing how different performance measures may accentuate or mask the impact of stockouts. The shelf technology work contributes to logistics postponement by studying how a two-tier inventory within the store may affect stockouts along more than one stockout attribute, and whether less frequent but longer stockouts are linked to better performance than shorter but more frequent stockouts.Item Buy Now, Think Later: Product Returns and Firm Performance(2018) Pritchard, Alan Matthew; Windle, Robert J.; Evers, Philip T.; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation studies the short-term and long-term impacts of return policies and feedback text on firm performance. Archival data, text analytics, and econometric analysis are used to further develop signaling theory, transaction cost economics, and procedural justice theory in operations, logistics, and supply chain management. The first essay is motivated by the ambiguity of prior research on the relationship between return policies and demand in the online setting. The return policy components that impact landed prices are identified and the relationships between terms of sale and demand are studied. After controlling for price, a lenient return policy is found to signal the unobservable quality of the seller’s product and demonstrate their capability to properly handle sales, shipping, and returns. A lenient return policy also helps mitigate customers’ risk associated with a mismatch between the product and their expectations and is shown to be positively associated with landed price and demand. The second essay demonstrates that the impact of a customer’s satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a seller or their product extends to other customers when their satisfaction or dissatisfaction becomes public knowledge, impacting sellers’ future demand. The impact of negative, trust revoking feedback is shown to differ from the impact of non-trust revoking, negative feedback, such as nonspecific complaints and complaints about price. In other words, the text associated with numerical feedback ratings determines the strength of the negative rating’s impact. Moreover, it is shown that negative feedback can be altered and even counteracted with a satisfactory service recovery, while the variance of complaint types in sellers’ feedback histories is negatively associated with demand. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates the benefits of two signals of quality: a lenient return policy and positive feedback history. Methodological contributions include the use of two original datasets and the combination of text analytics and regression analysis to inform managerial decisions. Managerial implications suggest that firms should take the leniency of their return policies and the strength of their online reputations into consideration when pricing and estimating demand.Item RETAIL OPERATIONS, CONSUMER STOCKPILING, AND LOGISTICS IT RESOURCES(2018) Pan, Xiaodan; Dresner, Martin; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines research questions within two streams: (1) consumer behavior and retail operations and (2) Information Technology (IT) and operational performance. Specifically, the first two essays study the impacts of consumer stockpiling behavior on retail operations management using natural experiment methodology. The third essay explores the interaction of logistics IT resources, organizational factors, and operational performance. The first essay examines how environmental stress affects consumer stockpiling behavior using the 2008–2009 financial crisis as a natural experiment. Although overall consumption falls due to budgetary constraints, the essay shows that environmental stress increases consumers’ propensity to stockpile during promotional periods. As consumers exhibit a higher stockpiling propensity, retailers are subject to an increased demand variation between regular and promotional periods, exposing themselves to a higher stockout risk. Moreover, the increase in demand variation is compounded if retailers adopt a randomly-priced promotion strategy. Consequently, a high-low promotion strategy coupled with greater stockpiling propensity requires more safety stock inventory during times of environmental stress due to economic downturns. The second essay explores how retail operations performance varies in the face of consumer stockpiling behavior utilizing hurricanes as a natural experiment. The essay shows that supply-side characteristics (retail network and product variety), demand-side characteristics (hurricane experience and household income), and disaster-side characteristics (hazard proximity and hazard intensity) significantly affect consumer stockpiling propensity as the hurricane approaches. Further, increased consumer stockpiling propensity has an immediate and persistent impact on retail operations, such as higher product availability before hurricanes and lower product availability after hurricanes. Note that this impact depends on store formats. This study suggests retailers need to carefully monitor factors affecting consumer stockpiling behavior during natural disasters. This would allow retailers to better manage their inventories and increase their ability to fulfill consumer demand. The third essay studies the interaction of logistics IT resources, organizational factors, and operating performance. The previous typology of logistics IT resources is extended into four mid-level constructs: operations-focused IT, decision-focused IT, service-focused IT, and IT development capability. The results show that operations-focused IT, decision-focused IT, and IT development capability is more related to superior operating performance than service-focused IT. Moreover, it is shown that organizational factors, such as firm size, firm age, and firm ownership, may enhance or suppress the effects of logistics IT resources on operational performance. In general, logistics firms should carefully manage IT resources according to their particular organizational environment in order to achieve competitive advantage. The findings for the first two essays contribute to retail operations theory by proposing and testing novel questions about the impact of the presence of consumer stockpiling behavior on retail operations management using natural experiment methodology. The findings for the third essay contribute to business logistics theory by proposing a typology for logistics IT resources and testing hypotheses regarding the impact of logistics IT resources on logistics firms’ operational performance.