Using the Pack‐and‐a‐Half Rule to Eliminate Backroom Inventories in Retail Operations

In the retail industry, backroom inventories are typically associated with higher labor costs and greater operational complexity. Thus, retailers look for ways to eliminate backroom inventories. A heuristic used for this purpose is the pack‐and‐a‐half rule which suggests that the shelf space allocated for a product should be at least 50% larger than the case pack quantity in which the product is delivered. Despite its popularity among retailers, the pack‐and‐a‐half rule has been ignored in the academic literature. We introduce the pack‐and‐a‐half rule, assess its impact on a retailer's profits, identify cost, demand, and product characteristics driving this impact, and propose a modification. Based on an analysis of data obtained from a retailer on 1,986 SKUs in 20 categories, we find that the pack‐and‐a‐half rule decreases a retailer's profits, on average, by 10% when applied uniformly across all SKUs. Further, this decrease is significantly affected by product depth, product width, demand elasticity, case pack quantity, and inventory carrying cost. Finally, we develop a set of modifications based on these variables where the pack‐and‐a‐half rule is applied selectively and in a stepwise fashion. These modifications limit the decrease in a retailer's profits to a range between 6% and 7%.     

Automated topic modeling of tourist reviews: Does the Anna Karenina principle apply?

Automated content analysis of online travel reviews allows identification of topics of travelers' satisfaction, yet its domain is not well researched. We suggest that the Anna Karenina principle positing a greater variability of the factors leading to business failure as opposed to those leading to success can be applied to the domain of visitors’ reviews of historic and cultural attractions. The larger variability of issues in reviews of dissatisfied visitors is likely to result in limitations for automated topic modeling. We confirm our proposition using TripAdvisor reviews of the Terracotta Army museum in China, and validate the outcome with two additional sites. The study strongly suggests that application of unsupervised topic mining algorithms to negative reviews may be problematic and the results should be treated with caution. The main themes of dissatisfaction of visitors to all three sites are reported and practical implications for management of the attractions are discussed.     

A play-the-winner-type urn design with reduced variability

We propose a new adaptive allocation rule, the drop-the-loser, that randomizes subjects in the course of a trial comparing treatments with dichotomous outcomes. The rule tends to assign more patients to better treatments with the same limiting proportion as the randomized play-the-winner rule. The new design has significantly less variable allocation proportion than the randomized play-the-winner rule. Decrease in variability translates into a gain in statistical power. For some values of success probabilities the drop-the-loser rule has a double advantage over conventional equal allocation in that it has better power and assigns more subjects to the better treatment. Acknowledgments. I thank Stephen Durham, the associate editor, and the referees for their helpful suggestions.     

Economic Implications of Alternative Allocation Schemes for Emission Allowances*

For reasons of political feasibility, emission trading systems may have to rely on free initial allocation of emission allowances in order to ameliorate adverse production and employment effects in dirty industries. Against the background of an emerging European‐wide emission trading system, we examine the trade‐off between such compensation and economic efficiency under output‐based and emissions‐based allocation rules. We show that the emissions‐based allocation rule is more costly than the output‐based rule in terms of maintaining output and employment in energy‐intensive industries. When the international allowance price increases, the inferiority of emissions‐based allocation vis‐à‐vis output‐based allocation becomes more pronounced, as emission subsidies drastically restrict efficiency gains from international trade in emission allowances.     

无锡市城乡统筹发展初探

城乡统筹发展是解决三农问题的关键,就目前对其内涵的理解存在不同的见解。文章主要在界定城乡统筹发展内涵的基础上,介绍了无锡统筹发展的成果及今后发展的措施。     

Allocations and Common Costs in Long-Run Investing and Pricing Decisions: An Historical Analysis

The extent to which allocated common costs should influence business decisions remains controversial in management accounting. In the finance and investment literature this issue is generally ignored or dismissed by appeals to the'incremental' principle. This article presents an historical analysis of allocations in long-run investing and pricing decisions. It is demonstrated that seminal figures in the development of both investment and price theory were conscious of the need for firms to cover common costs and generally favoured some form of allocation. The anti-allocationist position is shown to be of relatively recent origin and to have caused an inconsistency in the management accounting literature in the treatment of common costs. European costing theory is shown to have been consistently allocationist. Evidence of a return in the recent U.S. literature to the older Anglo-American, and continuing European, allocations tradition is presented.     

论城市广场规划设计原则

城市广场是一个城市的象征，建设城市广场是很必要的。本文探讨了城市广场与周边建筑的关系，以及建议了城市广场规划设计应遵循的一些原则。     

Customer Profitability Analysis Reports for Resource Allocation: The Role of Complex Marketing Environments

Most decision making research in management accounting remains focused on cost information in a production context. Little is known on the relevance of customer profifitability analysis (CuPA) reports, which more accurately reflect revenue and marketing support variations acrosscustomers, for marketing decisions. This study uses an experimental design to examine the impact of such reports on resource allocation decisions (that affect the firm's profits) in marketing environments varying in complexity. The main result of the experiment suggests that the value of CuPA reports depends on the complexity of the marketing setting. Only in a highly complex marketing setting do they enhance resource allocation decisions and resultant firm profitability. Conversely, in the simple marketing environment, decision makers can combine their traditional volume-based cost data with other available types of feedback to perform as well as under a more accurate CuPA report. These findings on complexity contrast with those of a prior study in a production context ( Gupta and King, 1997 ). It is argued that improvements in the current research design, in the form of regularly updated profitability reports and concerning accuracy, increase the relevance of CuPA reports in a complex marketing setting.     

道路交通对城市空间形态的影响

城市交通方式和道路系统的布局对城市的规模和空间结构分布具有重大影响 ,同样它作为重要的基础设施和对外交流通道对城市的发展方向也起着重大的引导作用。本文通过对道路交通的研究 ,揭示了城市的演变规律和发展趋势。     

对合肥市房地产业现状的几点看法

特定社会的分配关系总是由该社会的生产资料所有制关系和劳动力所有制关系决定的。社会主义初级阶段不成熟、不发达的生产资料公有制和劳动者劳动力发展不充分、不平衡决定了在分配上只能实行按劳分配和按要素分配相结合的制度。这是马克思主义分配理论的重大突破和巨大发展 ,