For online retailers who sell physical goods, every transaction has two main components: the physical product and the services by which the retailer facilitates the transaction. Delivery speed is arguably the most important service component for online retailers, and for this reason, many...

We analyze the performance of retail firms for the period 1978-97 using public financial data. Our performance measures are long-term stock returns and whether the firm filed for bankruptcy in the period of study. We assume that over a long time period of at least five years, stock returns are a...

We describe a three-step process that a retailer can use to set retail store sales staff levels. First, use historical data on revenue and planned and actual staffing levels by store to estimate how revenue varies with the staffing level at each store. We disentangle the endogeneity between...

Problem Definition: How much, if at all, does training in product features increase a sales associate's sales productivity?Academic / Practical Relevance: A knowledgeable retail sales associate (SA) can explain the features of available product variants and give a customer sufficient confidence...

We describe a methodology by which a retailer can identify action steps that are likely to increase sales and customer satisfaction and demonstrate the methodology using proprietary data from a large retailer with over 500 stores. We use monthly store-level data on a number of operational...