The role of physical distribution services as determinants of product returns in Internet retailing

Pressure continues to build on Internet retailers to squeeze out inefficiencies from their day-to-day operations. One major source of such inefficiencies is product returns. Indeed, product returns in Internet retailing have been shown to be, on average, as high as 22% of sales. Yet, most retailers accept them as a necessary cost of doing business. This is not surprising since many retailers do not have a clear understanding of the causes of product returns. While it is known that return policies of retailers, along with product attributes, are two important factors related to product return incidents, little is known about which aspects of the online retail transaction make such a purchase more return-prone. In the current study, we seek to address this issue. We use a large data set of customer purchases and returns to identify how process attributes in physical distribution service (PDS) influence product returns. The first attribute involves perceptions of scarcity conditions in inventory availability among consumers when retailers reveal to consumers information on inventory levels for the products that they intend to buy. Our results show that orders in which items are sold when these conditions are revealed to shoppers have a higher likelihood of being returned than orders in which these conditions are not revealed. While prior research has argued that inventory scarcity perceptions have an effect on purchases, our findings suggest that they are also related to the likelihood of these purchases being returned. The second attribute involves the reliability in the delivery of orders to consumers. We find that the likelihood of orders being returned depends on the consistency between retailer promises of timeliness in the delivery of orders and the actual delivery performance of the orders. Moreover, we find that the effect that consistency in the delivery has in the likelihood of returns, is stronger for orders that involve promises for expedited delivery than for orders with less expeditious promises. That is, although the occurrence of returns depends on the delays in the delivery of orders to consumers relative to the initial promises made by the retailers, this effect is more notable for orders that involve promises of fast delivery.     

Unlimited shelf space in Internet supply chains: Treasure trove or wasteland?

Internet retailing offers merchants limitless shelf space. This has led experts to highlight the existence of a “long tail” of offerings on the web and assert that the future of online business is “selling less of more.” However, it is difficult for Internet retailers of physical goods to sell a large scope of products without having to handle potentially large amounts of product returns from customers. This is due to the fact that customers can and do get overwhelmed by excessive product variety and often make erroneous purchasing decisions. We shed light on this issue through an assessment of theoretical predictions based on data from sales and returns of almost 7000 products in a particular product category. While retailers can benefit from expanding the scope of their inventories to generate Internet sales, the success of this strategy will depend on the control of unjustified product returns by consumers and the management of recurrent execution errors and product fit failures in transactions with customers. Furthermore, from our results, the gains that this strategy will bring to retailers will be bound by the amount of time products have been available on the Internet retailer's site, as well as by other attributes such as product price and size.     

Forecasting third-party mobile payments with implications for customer flow prediction

Forecasting customer flow is key for retailers in making daily operational decisions, but small retailers often lack the resources to obtain such forecasts. Rather than forecasting stores’ total customer flows, this research utilizes emerging third-party mobile payment data to provide participating stores with a value-added service by forecasting their share of daily customer flows. These customer transactions using mobile payments can then be utilized further to derive retailers’ total customer flows indirectly, thereby overcoming the constraints that small retailers face. We propose a third-party mobile-payment-platform centered daily mobile payments forecasting solution based on an extension of the newly-developed Gradient Boosting Regression Tree (GBRT) method which can generate multi-step forecasts for many stores concurrently. Using empirical forecasting experiments with thousands of time series, we show that GBRT, together with a strategy for multi-period-ahead forecasting, provides more accurate forecasts than established benchmarks. Pooling data from the platform across stores leads to benefits relative to analyzing the data individually, thus demonstrating the value of this machine learning application.     

Process quality improvement: An examination of general vs. outcome-specific climate and practices in hospitals

Despite numerous efforts to foster quality improvement in healthcare, much of the extant data and research indicate that substantial shortcomings in the delivery of effective and reliable care remain. This research examines both general and outcome-specific operations management efforts and their impact on delivering quality healthcare. We empirically test a conceptual framework of safety culture that accounts for the use of general quality practices as well as outcome-specific approaches in light of the general and more focused climates in which those practices are embedded. We utilize structural equation modeling to analyze a unique pairing of primary data from a survey of quality improvement directors and chief nursing officers at 272 hospitals across the U.S. with secondary data on process of care performance publicly reported by the federal government's Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). General safety climate and quality practices are found to establish an environment in which outcome-specific efforts enable process quality improvement. A split-group SEM analysis highlights significant differences in managing healthcare safety outcomes through climate and practices. In particular, the employment of practices focused on the specific outcome goals is found to relate to higher quality of patient care in smaller hospitals. In contrast, the development of a climate focused on specific outcome goals is found to relate to higher quality of patient care in larger hospitals. These findings suggest alternative approaches for small and large hospitals in the critical effort to improve patient safety and reduce healthcare costs.     

Service Guarantee Strength: The key to service quality

While most authors describe a service guarantee as a “zero-one variable” indicating the presence or absence of an explicit written service guarantee, this paper develops a construct called “Service Guarantee Strength” (SGS) that is a continuous variable. This construct measures the degree to which a firm sets clear service quality standards for itself on dimensions that customers care about, and has an formal policy for quickly giving meaningful compensation to customers when these standards are not met.The paper builds upon established micro-level behavioral theory to develop the “Service Guarantee Strength Framework”. This framework posits that high Service Guarantee Strength leads to improved service quality, customer satisfaction, and loyalty through three intervening variables—marketing communications impact, employee motivation and vision, and learning through service failure.An empirical investigation was conducted to test the SGS Framework using both employee and customer data from three pairs of firms, with each pair in a different industry. None of these firms had an explicit service guarantee. Unlike many behavioral research studies, this study measured both employee and customer perceptual data and compared the two. The research finds that Service Guarantee Strength is positively related to customer perceptions of service quality, customer satisfaction, and loyalty.     

Why internet service provider and content provider do not collaborate via monitoring of digital piracy

Internet service providers (ISPs) and content providers (CPs) have a symbiosis relationship in the Internet business ecosystem. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of and the conditions for their revenue sharing by means of on-line content piracy monitoring. CPs can benefit from the efforts of ISPs to monitor illegal content consumers, and can have the incentives to collaborate with ISPs. We suggest that if the quality degradation of a pirated content is low as in real world, there may not be a successful collaboration because CPs have little incentives to share their revenues with ISPs. We also investigated the impacts of ISP's piracy monitoring cost level, the value of contents, and CP's access fee per traffic on the possibility of their collaboration.     

Product Differentiation by Competing Vertical Hierarchies

We revisit the choice of product differentiation in the Hotelling model, by assuming that competing firms are vertically separated, and that retailers choose products' characteristics. The “principle of differentiation” does not hold because retailers with private information about their marginal costs produce less differentiated products in order to increase their information rents. Hence, information asymmetry within vertical hierarchies may increase social welfare by inducing them to sell products that appeal to a larger number of consumers. We show that the socially optimal level of transparency between manufacturers and retailers depends on the weight assigned to consumers' surplus and trades off two effects: higher transparency reduces price distortion but induces retailers to produce excessively similar products.     

家乐福渠道运行中零售商与供应商的关系管理

在经历了30年（1960—1990）的历练后,连锁超市已成为占主导地位的零售业态。通过坚持不懈地推广连锁经营,零售商不断冲破地域限制形成了规模经济,从而可越过批发商直接从供应商进货,原来的产销矛盾开始演化为供应商一零售商矛盾。在市场大供应链终端的零售业本身渠道运行效率提高的同时,供应商一零售商矛盾的出现对营销带来了新的挑战。本案例选择由法国人M·富安尼先生创立的于1995年进入北京市场的家乐福连锁零售公司（Carrefour,以下简称家乐福）为零售业的代表,深入研究家乐福对供应商的分类、选择、建立业务关系和奖罚等行为。在布局上,首先,简要介绍案例企业背景和家乐福的概况及其货物采购;其次,深入研究家乐福与供应商业务的建立、维护和发展;最后,详细分析家乐福对供应商的管理行为（包括奖罚等）,以便进一步实例论述渠道运作中零售商与供应商的关系管理。     

Internet service cognition and use,and their promotion in the lives of adolescents and youngsters in Taiwan

The usage rate of the Internet for adolescents and youngsters is very high. Nearly 95% of adolescents and youngsters have used the Internet in 2008. Such a high rate implies that Internet services must be greatly influencing the daily lives of adolescents and youngsters. Against this backdrop, this research aims to explore the cognition and use of Internet services among adolescents and youngsters and determine its promotion effect in their lives. Results show that there are significant differences in the Internet service cognition and use among different demographic groups. By stepwise regression, this research found that the Internet services indeed influence adolescents’ and youngsters’ quality of life. Digital amusement, cultural resource reservation, network communication, and e-Business positively enhance the quality of life of adolescents and youngsters. On the other hand, the degree of cognition and use of online learning have a negative correlation on life promotion.     

Designing e-government services: Key service attributes and citizens’ preference structures

Advances in Internet technologies have led to the popularity of technology-based self-services, with the design of such services becoming increasingly important. Using technology-based services in the public sector as the setting, we identified the key service attributes driving adoption and use of transactional e-government services, and citizens’ preference structures across these attributes. After identifying four key attributes, i.e., usability, computer resource requirement, technical support provision and security provision, we conducted a Web-based survey and a conjoint experiment among 2465 citizens. In a two-stage Web-based survey, citizens reported their perceptions about a smartcard technology for transactional e-government services before use, and their use and satisfaction 4 months later. Results showed that the key attributes (noted above) influenced citizens’ intentions, subsequent use and satisfaction. In the conjoint experiment, citizens reported their preferences for key service attributes for two transactional e-government services. Further, a cluster analysis uncovered four distinct citizen segments, i.e., balanced, usability-focused, risk-conscious and resource-conservative, that can inform efforts in designing e-government services. A post hoc analysis confirmed the appropriateness of the market segmentation in understanding citizens’ adoption and use of transactional e-government services.     

Erratum to ‘Inventory record inaccuracy: Causes and labor effects’

Inventory record inaccuracy (IRI) is a pervasive problem in retailing and causes non-trivial profit loss. In response to retailers’ interest in identifying antecedents and consequences of IRI, we present a study that comprises multiple modeling initiatives. We first develop a dynamic simulation model to compare and contrast impacts of different operational errors in a continuous (Q, R) inventory system through a full-factorial experimental design. While backroom and shelf shrinkage are found to be predominant drivers of IRI, the other three errors related to recording and shelving have negligible impacts on IRI. Next, we empirically assess the relationships between labor availability and IRI using longitudinal data from five stores in a global retail chain. After deriving a robust measure of IRI through Bayesian computation and estimating panel data models, we find strong evidence that full-time labor reduces IRI whereas part-time labor fails to alleviate it. Further, we articulate the reinforcing relationships between labor and IRI by formally assessing the gain of the feedback loop based on our empirical findings and analyzing immediate, intermediate, and long-term impacts of IRI on labor availability. The feedback modeling effort not only integrates findings from simulation and econometric analysis but also structurally explores the impacts of current practices. We conclude by discussing implications of our findings for practitioners and researchers.     

Inventory record inaccuracy: Causes and labor effects

Inventory record inaccuracy (IRI) is a pervasive problem in retailing and causes non-trivial profit loss. In response to retailers’ interest in identifying antecedents and consequences of IRI, we present a study that comprises multiple modeling initiatives. We first develop a dynamic simulation model to compare and contrast impacts of different operational errors in a continuous (Q, R) inventory system through a full-factorial experimental design. While backroom and shelf shrinkage are found to be predominant drivers of IRI, the other three errors related to recording and shelving have negligible impacts on IRI. Next, we empirically assess the relationships between labor availability and IRI using longitudinal data from five stores in a global retail chain. After deriving a robust measure of IRI through Bayesian computation and estimating panel data models, we find strong evidence that full-time labor reduces IRI whereas part-time labor fails to alleviate it. Further, we articulate the reinforcing relationships between labor and IRI by formally assessing the gain of the feedback loop based on our empirical findings and analyzing immediate, intermediate, and long-term impacts of IRI on labor availability. The feedback modeling effort not only integrates findings from simulation and econometric analysis but also structurally explores the impacts of current practices. We conclude by discussing implications of our findings for practitioners and researchers.     

从大学生网络消费的特征浅谈网络营销策略

进入电子商务时代后,大学生对网络购物方式及网络消费的接受和认可程度有所提高。文章对大学生网络消费的特点及影响消费的因素进行分析,在此基础上,提出一些网络营销策略,为网上零售商提供参考。     

The patient safety chain: Transformational leadership's effect on patient safety culture, initiatives, and outcomes

The purpose of this study is to investigate the existence of a patient safety chain for hospitals. Drawing on high reliability organization theory, multifactor leadership theory and total quality management literature, we develop and test a model for improving patient safety – a critical issue facing hospitals today. Specifically, we hypothesize that improving patient safety begins at the highest level of the organization with a transformational leadership style. This leads to a sequence of linkages whereby transformational leadership has an important relationship with creating a culture of safety, which in turn is associated with the adoption of patient safety initiatives, and ultimately with positive improvements in patient safety outcomes. Using data from a nationwide survey of over 200 hospitals, we use structural equation modeling to provide empirical support for the effectiveness of this patient safety chain model. The results have major implications for enhancing operations in hospital settings.     

审计委员会透明度与供应商/客户关系型交易

关系型交易的隐蔽性决定了公开信息披露的不透明。利用2013年上交所强制要求审计委员会披露履职信息的准自然实验,构建双重差分模型,考察提高审计委员会透明度是否以及如何影响上市公司与供应商/客户之间的关系型交易。研究发现,提高审计委员会透明度在短期内对供应商/客户关系型交易有促进作用,这可能与政策实施传递的可置信承诺有关,信息使用者更加信任企业的信息披露,但长期内这一促进作用有所减弱。进一步验证信任机制的作用发现,只有当企业位于法律环境较好、社会信任度较高的地区时,提高审计委员会透明度才有利于开展此类关系型交易。此外,审计委员会透明度提高通过促进供应链关系型交易缓解了企业融资约束。上述结论丰富了关系型交易在公司信息环境层面影响因素的研究,并为监管部门评估审计委员会改革实施效果提供了经验证据支持。     

Decision analysis and coordination of dual supply chain with retailer's offline return service and online reviews

Based on the centralized and decentralized decision-making cases, this study constructs a dual-channel supply chain game model that considers offline return service and online reviews, and explores the pricing decisions and benefits of supply chains under the dual influence of return service level and online reviews. The impact of return rate, return service level and perceived quality of online reviews on optimal supply chain decisions and profits are further analyzed. Finally, considering the phenomenon of double marginalization in the supply chain, this study coordinates the supply chain based on the benefit-sharing contract coordination model to achieve Pareto improvement. The research shows that: The manufacturer's optimal wholesale price, the optimal online selling price and the retailer's optimal offline price are positively correlated with the perceived quality of online reviews and the level of return service. Compared with the return service level, the perceived quality of online reviews has a greater impact on the overall profit of the supply chain. Under the dual influence of the perceived quality of online reviews and the level of return service, the supply chain profit in the centralized model is better than that in the decentralized model. The coordination model can effectively coordinate the supply chain. Moreover, when the sharing ratio of manufacturers is obviously lower than that of retailers, the coordination effect is better at this time.     

Physical distribution service performance and Internet retailer margins: The drop-shipping context

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between Internet retailer margins and retailer promises regarding product distribution service. We focus particularly on Internet retailing in a drop-ship context, because this model provides a purer separation of these activities and the related costs and constitutes a critical context for the empirical examination of the relationship between retailer margins and promises. Drawing upon retailer and consumer perspectives, we articulate and justify a set of propositions regarding the relationships among different Internet retailer margins and promised product distribution service performance. We examine a sample comprising over 2000 retail transactions with customers and find partial empirical support for the set of propositions. Specifically, the results show that product margins and the margins on shipping and handling are inversely proportional. We also find a direct relationship between promised product distribution service performance and shipping and handling margins even after key product characteristics known to influence the cost side of the margin equation are controlled for. These results confirm an intuitively logical view of the relationships among pricing and promised product distribution service performance. The study also offers insights for practitioners regarding the opportunity to enhance performance in this domain and demonstrates the benefit and power of employing objective measures drawn from the vast array of information captured via online transactions.     

Transaction costs to retailers of different methods of payment: Results of a pilot study

Do credit card transactions cost the retailer substantially more than other forms of payment? This question was central to a study of the relative costs of cash, cheque, credit card and credit account transactions to retailers in the United Kingdom. The study identifies the principal cost elements and provides quantitative estimates based upon a pilot sample. The costs of accepting credit card and providing credit accounts were found to depend crucially upon the generation of additional sales by these forms of payment.     

Public service motivation and customer service behaviour: testing the mediating role of emotional labour and the moderating role of gender

ABSTRACT

Prior research indicates that public service motivation (PSM) provides a motivational base for effective emotion regulation. This study extends this body of research by investigating how service workers in different gender groups regulate their emotions during service transactions. Analysis of survey data from public service workers in Thailand showed that ‘deep acting’ is the primary emotional labour strategy-linking PSM and customer service behaviour (CSB), whereas ‘surface acting’ does not play a mediating role. The results further revealed that PSM has a stronger association with male workers’ CSB only via deep acting. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.     

Cash Flow from Operations, Accruals and Earnings Persistency

Persistency of earnings is an important measure of eamings quality. It is generally accepted that the more the persistency is, the higher the quality of earnings is. We analyze the characteristic factors influencing earnings persistency, use data of A-share listed companies during 1998-2004, and find that earnings persistency is significantly related to the nature of earnings, the cash content of earnings and the quality of accruals.