4/1/2016 — Taylor Guitars purchased an ebony mill in Cameroon to ensure corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSER) in sourcing, and shared the responsibly-sourced supply of ebony with competitors through horizontal sourcing. Inspired by this case, we investigate vertical integration as an alternative strategy for CSER in sourcing in which a firm can vertically integrate with its supplier in order to ensure responsible practices in the supply chain.

• KEYWORD(S):
• corporate social responsibility
• operations
• supply chain
• sustainability

9/13/2023 — This paper uses transaction-level import data at the shipment level to examine how multinational companies importing to the US have restructured their supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that companies sourced from fewer locations, reduced the share of imports from China, and increased the share of imports from other Asian countries, such as India and Vietnam, and North American countries, such as Canada and Mexico. For managers, our results imply that a one-size-fits-all mentality regarding supply chain disruption responses is not appropriate, and companies’ disruption-response strategies need to be tailored to individual supply chains’ circumstances.

• KEYWORD(S):
• operations

8/16/2021 — To increase revenue or improve customer service, companies are increasingly personalizing their product or service offerings based on their customers' history of interactions. In this paper, we show how call centers can improve customer service by implementing personalized priority policies.

• KEYWORD(S):
• management

4/28/2021 — Inspired by a data set from the Chinese retailer JD.com, we study the click and purchase behavior of customers in an online retail setting by employing a structural estimation approach.

• KEYWORD(S):
• operations

8/17/2020 — Brick-and-mortar (B&M) retailers must enhance the customer in-store experience to better compete with online retailers. Fitting rooms in B&M stores play a critical role in the customer experience as a venue to experience products and examine alternatives. High traffic in fitting rooms, however, obstructs the customer’s ability to choose a product. In this paper, we (1) examine the impact of fitting room traffic on store performance using archival data, (2) identify phantom stockouts as a plausible mechanism for this impact, and (3) provide a potential solution and quantify the magnitude of its impact using two field experiments.  

• KEYWORD(S):
• operations