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.     

Employee Involvement And Pay At Us And Canadian Auto Suppliers

We use survey data and field research to investigate the effects of employee involvement practices on outcomes for blue-collar workers in the auto-supply industry. We find these practices raise wages by 3–5%. The causal mechanism linking involvement and wages appears to be most consistent with efficiency-wage theories, and least consistent with compensating differences. We find no evidence that employee involvement affects plants' survival or employment growth.     

Cutting-edge technologies

In the past decade the development of renewable energy technology has moved from being a somewhat eccentric idea to a significant practical proposition. Indeed, full-scale commercial systems are now in operation in many parts of the world. for example the USA now has more than 1.5 GW of installed wind power capacity feeding into electricity grids, mainly in wind farms in California. This article presents a strategic analysis of renewable energy R&D in the UK.     

CONSUMER DIRECT FULFILLMENT PERFORMANCE IN INTERNET RETAILING: EMERGENCY TRANSSHIPMENTS AND DEMAND DISPERSION

The collaborative fulfillment of consumer orders by Internet retailers and wholesalers has proven important in the realization of sustainable levels of online profitability. Concentrating on consumer direct fulfillment (or drop shipping), an empirical simulation model evaluates avenues for improving logistical performance. The empirical simulation model centers on the online music CD retailing industry. It evaluates the effects of emergency transshipments and demand dispersion on inventory and product‐release performance, as well as on transportation costs, in consumer direct fulfillment operations. Results show that emergency transshipments improve inventory and product‐release performance in these operations. Furthermore, the inventory‐performance improvements are maximized when inventory facilities fulfill demand that is uniformly balanced across markets primarily assigned to each facility. Finally, gains in inventory and release performance obtained from emergency transshipments outweigh additional transportation costs incurred from a greater reliance on emergency transshipments for consumer direct fulfillment.     

MUST GOVERNMENT GO FISHING?

The depletion of fish stocks around the UK presents serious problems for the UK, and in particular the Scottish, fishing industry. This is a classic 'tragedy of the commons', repeatedly occurring in fisheries, where open access to a limited resource leads to serious depletion and may ultimately wipe out that resource. A recent report by the Royal Society of Edinburgh endorses the scientific basis for drastic cuts in fishing quotas under the Common Fisheries Policy to conserve stocks, and the necessary regulation and restriction of fishing effort in the UK. But it further recommends government-led initiatives to reorganise and finance the industry. Fishing in the UK is a successful entrepreneurial business and no such intervention by government is required. Government must concentrate on devising methods of regulation which, through the extension of tradable property rights in fishing, would encourage the best economic return from this important public resource.     

Order management for profit on the Internet

To succeed, Internet retailers must make a profit on the goods and services they sell. But e-tailers are still searching for strategies that work. To test current practices, we became “phantom shoppers” and bought a randomly chosen set of CDs from a variety of Internet retailers. Our findings suggest that order management and logistics skills are pivotal for selling profitably on the Internet. In this article, we show how Internet retailers can deploy resources creatively to attract the right shoppers, convert these shoppers into buyers, and improve the chances of repeat purchase while maintaining profit margins.