Antecedents and Effects of Retail Shelf Availability
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Abstract
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.