Online retailers often offer free shipping threshold policies: customers who purchase more than a threshold amount are not charged an additional fee for shipping. This paper provides a data-driven analytical model to (i) assess the profitability of a retailer’s current shipping threshold...

Automobile manufacturers in the U.S. supply chain exhibit significant differences in their days-of-supply of finished vehicles (average inventory divided by average daily sales rate). For example, from 1995 to 2004, Toyota consistently carried approximately 30 fewer days-of-supply than General...

What is the relationship between inventory and sales? Clearly, inventory could increase sales: expanding inventory creates more choice (options, colors, etc.) and might signal a popular/desirable product. Or, inventory might encourage a consumer to continue her search (e.g., on the theory that...

Abstract Perishable capacity is often sold before it is used (e.g., tickets sold weeks before a sporting event) which creates the opportunity to include in the pricing mechanism a recourse strategy, i.e., allowing the firm or buyer to change ownership after an initial transaction. For example, a...

Online service platforms that enable customers to connect with a large population of independent servers have been successfully developed in many sectors, including transportation, lodging, and delivery, among others. We ask a basic, yet fundamentally important, question - who should set the...

Problem definition: Due to the Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court ruling in 2013, Georgia was no longer required to get federal preclearance for changes to its voting processes. In response, county election administrators throughout Georgia modified their voting practices between the 2012 and...

Using a proprietary dataset, we analyze the impact of the implementation of a “buy-online, pickup-in-store” (BOPS) project. The implementation of this project is associated with a reduction in online sales and an increase in store sales and traffic. These results can be explained by two...

Millions of nanostores serve bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers in emerging markets. Their suppliers, consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, struggle with high operational costs that largely stem from shopkeepers’ liquidity constraints. We empirically investigate whether suppliers can improve...

Firms compete in an increasingly omnichannel environment. Customer journeys no longer follow a single-channel linear path but look much “messier,” involving many channels, firm-owned and external, which are seamlessly integrated through technology. The associated changes in consumer behavior...