Logistics, Business & Public Policy
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2256
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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 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.