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Learning from Inventory Availability Information: Evidence from Field Experiments on Amazon
Many online retailers provide real-time inventory availability information. Customers can learn from the inventory level and update their beliefs about the product. Thus, consumer purchasing behavior may be impacted by the availability information. Based on a unique setting from Amazon lightning deals, which displays the percentage of inventory consumed in real time, we explore whether and how consumers learn from inventory availability information. Identifying the effect of learning on consumer decisions has been a notoriously difficult empirical question because of endogeneity concerns. We address this issue by running two randomized field experiments on Amazon in which we create exogenous shocks on the inventory availability information for a random subset of Amazon lightning deals. In addition, we track the dynamic purchasing behavior and inventory information for 23,665 lightning deals offered by Amazon and use their panel structure to further explore the relative effect of learning. We find evidence of consumers learning from inventory information: a decrease in product availability causally attracts more sales in the future; in particular, a 10% increase in past claims leads to a 2.08% increase in cart add-ins in the next hour. Moreover, we show that buyers use observable product characteristics to moderate their inferences when learning from others; a deep discount weakens the learning momentum, whereas a good product rating amplifies the learning momentum.
This paper was accepted by Serguei Netessine, operations management.
Journal Article
The unofficial Divergent aptitude test : discover your true faction!
Ever wonder what faction you'd be placed in if you were a part of the bestselling Divergent series? Filled with hundreds of personality questions, this book guides you through different scenarios to help you demonstrate your virtues, uncover your strengths, and discover your true faction.
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Thirty Years of Inventory Routing
The inventory-routing problem (IRP) dates back 30 years. It can be described as the combination of vehicle-routing and inventory management problems, in which a supplier has to deliver products to a number of geographically dispersed customers, subject to side constraints. It provides integrated logistics solutions by simultaneously optimizing inventory management, vehicle routing, and delivery scheduling. Some exact algorithms and several powerful metaheuristic and matheuristic approaches have been developed for this class of problems, especially in recent years. The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive review of this literature, based on a new classification of the problem. We categorize IRPs with respect to their structural variants and the availability of information on customer demand.
Journal Article
Coordinating Inventory Control and Pricing Strategies for Perishable Products
We analyze a joint pricing and inventory control problem for a perishable product with a fixed lifetime over a finite horizon. In each period, demand depends on the price of the current period plus an additive random term. Inventories can be intentionally disposed of, and those that reach their lifetime have to be disposed of. The objective is to find a joint pricing, ordering, and disposal policy to maximize the total expected discounted profit over the planning horizon taking into account linear ordering cost, inventory holding and backlogging or lost-sales penalty cost, and disposal cost. Employing the concept of
L
-concavity, we show some monotonicity properties of the optimal policies. Our results shed new light on perishable inventory management, and our approach provides a significantly simpler proof of a classical structural result in the literature. Moreover, we identify bounds on the optimal order-up-to levels and develop an effective heuristic policy. Numerical results show that our heuristic policy performs well in both stationary and nonstationary settings. Finally, we show that our approach also applies to models with random lifetimes and inventory rationing models with multiple demand classes.
Journal Article
Truth, lies or self-deception? Striatal D sub(2/3 receptor availability predicts individual differences in social conformity)
Previous positron emission tomography (PET) studies have consistently shown a negative association between striatal D sub(2/3 receptor availability and socially desirable responding (SDR). However, as SDR is a complex personality trait, the functional significance of this relationship is unclear. The aim of the present study was to determine whether the relationship between D) sub(2)/3 receptor availability and SDR reflects a tendency to present oneself positively to others, consistent with social conformity (impression management, IM), or the tendency to view one's own behavior positively (self-deceptive enhancement, SDE). Striatal D sub(2/3 receptor availability was assessed in 23 healthy volunteers using [[super]11C]raclopride PET. SDR was assessed using the Lie scale of the revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, and IM and SDE were measured using the Paulhus Deception Scales. Analysis of personality variables revealed a positive relationship between Lie and log IM (r = 0.64, p = 0.01) but not Lie and SDE (r = -0.36, ns). Consistent with previous findings, Lie was negatively associated with D) sub(2)/3 receptor availability in the sensorimotor striatum (r = - 0.55, p = 0.05), and a similar trend-level relationship was observed for log IM (r = -0.54 p = 0.06) but not SDE (r = 0.23, ns). Whilst these associations are modest, results suggest that striatal D sub(2/3 receptor availability may be particularly associated with social conformity, rather than self-deception.)
Journal Article
A queueing-inventory system with a repeated-orbit policy during the service
We consider a service system in which customers who arrive at a service station and place an order, are not involved in the processing of their order, which can therefore be executed in their absence. Consequently, customers may leave the service station for some period of time during the processing of their order (i.e., go to orbit), and then return. While the customers are in orbit, they can utilize their time efficiently. If the service is completed before the customer's return from orbit, the ready service (RS) is stored in a designated storage facility until the customer returns and retrieves the RS from the inventory. If, however, the service is not yet completed when the customer returns, the customer can leave to orbit again. Accordingly, the policy is called \"repeated orbit\" (during the service). We formulate and analyze the queueing-inventory-repeated-orbit (QIRO) system using the matrix geometric method. The optimal orbiting time is calculated by maximizing the customer's expected utility. In addition, the optimal RS storage capacity and the optimal investment in preservation technologies (to store the RSs) are derived, both of which serve to increase demand and thus maximize the system's expected profit.
Journal Article
Managing Global Sourcing: Inventory Performance
The use of global suppliers has increased considerably over the last three decades. Operations management theory establishes that global sourcing requires more units of inventory, but since these units are often procured at a lower cost from global suppliers the capital invested in inventory and the consequent financial burden may increase or decrease with global sourcing. This study provides rigorous firm-level empirical evidence that links the global sourcing practices of public U.S. firms and their inventory investments. We process bill of lading manifests (customs forms) to extract information on over half a million sea shipments from global suppliers to U.S. public firms and link this information with quarterly financial data from the Compustat database. We provide stylized facts on the participation of different firms and sectors in global trade. Using a simultaneous equation model, we find that an increase in global sourcing results in an increase in inventory investment. A 10% shift in sourcing from domestic to global suppliers increases the inventory investment by 8.8% for an average firm in our sample. We also find that increasing the number of suppliers can mitigate this increase in inventory investment: for example, going from single to dual sourcing reduces inventory investment by about 11%. We illustrate the use of our estimates to identify the impact of changing global sourcing strategy on inventory investment and operational performance metrics.
This paper was accepted by Martin Lariviere, operations management
.
Journal Article