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This paper examines sharing platform in the agricultural supply chain that serves as a direct link between farmers and consumers. We analyze the competition between the sharing platform and the retailer when they face two types of consumers (switchers and retailer-loyal consumers) based on whether they are loyal to the retailer. We investigate how the number of switchers and farmers' marginal costs affect the retailer's optimal pricing and profit. We first analyze the case of the sharing platform being a non-profit organization, where farmers pay no fee to use the platform. Our analysis reveals several interesting findings. First, the presence of the non-profit sharing platform will induce the retailer to reduce its equilibrium retail price, making it worse off; both consumers and farmers will become better off. Second, with more switchers in the market, the retailer will decrease its equilibrium retail price; the platform's equilibrium market-clearing price may increase or decrease. Moreover, farmers' marginal costs for high-type products have nonmonotonic effects on the firms' equilibrium prices. In an extension, we consider a for-profit platform, who charges farmers a percentage fee for sales. We find that a higher percentage fee by the for-profit sharing platform may reduce its profit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past customer spending in a category is generally a positive signal of future customer spending. Analyses of historical data at two retailers demonstrate that there exist "canary categories" for which the reverse is true. Purchases in these categories are a signal that customers are less likely to return to that retailer. The authors propose an explanation for the existence of canary categories and then develop a stylized model that illustrates four contributing factors: the probability that a customer finds their favorite brand, customers' willingness to substitute brands, the cost and attractiveness of visiting other stores, and expectations about future brand availability. The analysis uses both field data and experiments to investigate these factors. The findings suggest that canary categories exist (at least in part) because store assortments are not completely adjusted to local preferences. An implication is that canary categories are endogenous to each retailer; the same category may be a canary category at one retailer and a destination category at a competing retailer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between advertising and financing decisions in an online supply chain consisting of an e-platform and a capital-constrained retailer. The e-platform is the leader in a Stackelberg game, and the interaction is modelled in two advertising scenarios. The results indicate that advertising can reduce risk and is always beneficial, with an e-platform willing to support the retailer only when the former decides on the advertising level. When providing both advertising and financing services, the e-platform gains the ability to directly regulate the retailer's ordering decisions, thereby increasing its strategic flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital retailing is omnipresent, such that shoppers increasingly interact with digital devices in physical stores. In service interactions involving the use of digital devices, shoppers attain novel forms of support, but they still need a means to achieve a sense of autonomy. To address this challenge, the current article reports on a qualitative analysis that reveals three main dimensions of phygital autonomy (visual, verbal, and kinetic) that relate to fundamental human senses and may enhance or undermine shoppers' perceived autonomy, due to their extension or restriction. By reviewing the concept of autonomy across distinct retail settings, this study also provides theoretical and practical insights for how to reconcile shoppers' autonomy dilemma, across their desires for freedom of action, freedom of choice, and human support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online retailers worldwide invest beyond their core business of retailing to offer their own delivery services (ODS) to deliver products to customers' homes through their own logistics network. How does this shift to ODS affect customers' behaviors and sales performance? When and why do retailers venture beyond their core competence to offer ODS? To explore these questions, the authors analyze 250,055 customer transactions over 10 years across 416 cities and 49 product categories from JD, a major online retailer in China. Using difference-in-differences models, causal mediation analysis, and the synthetic control method, they find that ODS increases customers' monthly spending by 7.8% and grows city-level sales by 11.9%. This study is the first to quantify the sales impact of ODS and shed light on when and why it works. The findings reveal that ODS has greater value for markets with lower trust levels, infrequent customers, high-risk product categories, and consumers who prefer the focal retailer (versus that of third-party sellers). Causal mediation analysis further reveals that ODS not only improves delivery quality but also builds customer trust, which together increase customers' monthly spending, purchase frequency, and the number of items ordered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mishra and Raghunathan (2004) and Kim (2008) conducted a study on the same model but reached conflicting results on under what circumstances vendor-managed inventory (VMI) benefits the retailer as opposed to retailer-managed inventory (RMI) in a setting where two products are partially substitutable. However, we note that their conflicting results were due to different assumptions about unmet demand after product substitution, which is influenced by consumers response to retail stockouts. This paper then extends their studies by incorporating consumer response to retail stockouts and re-examining the impacts of VMI on the retailer's performance as well as on each manufacturer's. Therefore, this paper reconciles the conflicts in the existing scholarly work and provides a more complete understanding of when each supply chain member is better off with VMI than RMI in a two-product setting. Additionally, the incorporation of consumer response to retail stockouts sheds light on how product substitution and consumers' store loyalty affect the value of VMI to each supply chain member. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To provide consumers with a channel to interact directly with service retailers, some service platforms have allowed consumers to incentivize service retailers for better service via tipping. There are pros and cons of allowing and not allowing tipping in terms of service levels and costs, which can affect consumer utility and platform profitability. By developing a game-theoretic model, we analyze the tipping strategy choices of platforms under competition. We find that when the service ability of service retailers is high, platforms with service retailer pricing should allow tipping, whereas for at least one platform with platform pricing, they should allow it only when the commission rate is also high. Interestingly, if consumers are concerned about service levels in addition to service prices during tipping, for platforms with platform pricing, only one platform should allow tipping when the service ability is medium. However, when the service ability is low or when the sensitiveness of the service level to tips exceeds the threshold, neither platform should allow tipping, regardless of pricing models. Finally, an all-win outcome for service platforms, service retailers, and consumers may be achieved only when platforms adopt different pricing models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The competition among Food & Beverage companies has substantially increased in today's age of digitization. Sales forecasting is one of their main challenges. Due to space limitations, employee shortages, and rising online demand, retail sales forecasting became extremely important for Food and Beverage companies. This research analyzed the sales data of a multinational Food & Beverage Company. It proposed a framework using Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) clustering, Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering (HAC), and Random Forest algorithm for forecasting sales. This model analyzes the impact of the weekends, holidays, promotional activities, customer sentiments, festivals, and socio-economic situations in sales data and is able to forecast sales ranging from one to 15 months. An investigation of the suggested model's performance compared to numerous cutting-edge sales forecasting techniques is carried out to show its efficacy. Here, we demonstrate that the proposed hybrid model surpasses current predicting and computing efficiency methods. The results of this study can help retail managers to allocate resources and manage inventories in well-informed ways. The findings suggest that combining many strategies may produce the most precise forecasts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the value of due diligence recommendations on Reddit's Wallstreetbets (WSB) platform. Before the Gamestop (GME) short squeeze, recommendations are significant predictors of returns and cash-flow news. This predictability is eliminated post-GME. Post-GME, the fraction of reports emphasizing price-pressure or attention-grabbing stocks dramatically increases, and the decline in informativeness is concentrated in these reports. Similarly, retail trade informativeness is particularly strong following DD reports in the pre-GME period, but not post-GME. Our findings are consistent with the view that the Gamestop event altered the culture of WSB , leading to a deterioration in investment quality that adversely affected smaller investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the universal point scheme with multiple retailers and a platform that implements the points within a channel. First, we analysed the equilibriums of the channel under the decentralised control and the mode of lateral cost-sharing among retailers. We found that retailers are willing to set the lowest point conversion ratios under the lateral cost-sharing mode compared with the decentralised and centralised control modes. The optimal conversion ratio of a retailer under the decentralised control is greater than the one under the centralised control when the cost spillover and double marginalisation are not significant. Next, we extended the model by considering the participation of new retailer. In this dynamic channel, the impact of the cost spillover phenomenon on the channel members' preferences is discussed. Third, we showed that the wholesale price contract for point management used in the real world has a limitation in terms of profit split. Following this, we proposed a buyback contract and showed the optimal contract parameters under which the channel's profit could be maximised and arbitrarily split. The managerial insights we obtained shed light on how to design a universal point scheme and select channel members to achieve an all-win scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common problem faced by contemporary retailers is consumers' tendency to avoid purchases that postpone or prevent cash flow for retailers, thus negatively affecting retailers' sales and profits. Little is known about the factors that drive consumers to avoid purchases or about marketing tactics that may reduce the tendency, especially from a cultural perspective. The authors attempt to fill this gap by exploring the role of an important cultural variable, namely, power distance belief (PDB), on consumers' tendency to avoid purchases. PDB is the extent to which people accept and endorse inequalities in society. A series of 14 studies (including 6 studies in the Web Appendix) using a variety of operationalizations of the key variables suggest that consumers high (vs. low) in PDB are less likely to avoid purchases (Studies 1a, 1b, and 1c) because they generally perceive greater constraints on their behavior (Study 2). These constraints are aversive, triggering the desire to overcome them and to have more as a compensatory mechanism, thereby reducing the tendency to avoid purchases. Accordingly, low (but not high) PDB consumers' tendency to forgo purchases is significantly decreased when they perceive greater constraints on their choices and decisions (Study 3) and when they experience a high social density (Study 4). However, high (but not low) PDB consumers' tendency to avoid purchases significantly increases when individuals perceive that constraints facilitate hierarchy (Study 5) or that constraints lead to positive outcomes (Study 6). Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Omnichannel retailers face the elusive challenge of maintaining customer patronage in the current competitive business environment. Drawing upon the flow theory and literature on omnichannel integration, this study investigated how different types of omnichannel integration (i.e. informational, transactional, and relational integration) influence customer patronage through the flow experience. Additionally, this study examined the potential moderating role of retailer-customer value congruence in the impact of omnichannel integration. We collected survey data from 292 omnichannel customers to test our research model. The results showed that the flow experience mediated the positive effects of transactional integration and relational integration on customer patronage. Additionally, value congruence positively moderated the effects of informational integration and relational integration on the flow experience. The implications and limitations of this study are further discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In-store communication delivered through technological formats (e.g., kiosk, digital display) and nontechnological formats (e.g., magazine cover, flyer) can help retailers enhance sales by delivering relevant content to consumers. Although prior research has examined the effects of deal-oriented content that primarily offers promotions for a single product on shopper spending, the effects of inspirational content that sparks ideas (e.g., ways to use products) on spending are unclear. Inspirational content can affect spending differently from deal-oriented content as it activates stronger motivation for consumption goal completion. This article proposes that inspirational content activates stronger motivations for the consumer's goal completion and therefore increases spending more than deal-oriented content does. The authors propose and empirically test the hypotheses using data from a set of experimental studies, a field experiment, and an eye-tracking study. The results show that inspirational content increases spending more than deal-oriented content or no content does. This effect is mediated by consumption goal completion, such that it is attenuated when consumers already have consumption goals or when the content detracts from inspiration-induced goals. These results suggest that retailers can increase sales by using clear, inspirational content in their communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Retailer price promotions, and in particular multi-unit deals such as the ubiquitous "buy one, get one," are often criticized as a cause of food waste, presumably because they lure households into buying more than they can realistically consume. In this research, the authors combine field data and experiments to provide the first systematic test of this claim. The field data, which span eight frequently purchased perishable foods, show no evidence of a positive relationship between single-unit or multi-unit price promotions and food waste. In fact, households that took advantage of a multi-unit deal reported wasting less than did households paying regular prices (RPs), but only when the quantity purchased was larger than usual. Given this result, and that households also reported consuming and freezing more, the authors hypothesize that promotion-induced overbuying triggers a concern for food waste that encourages waste prevention. One experiment finds support for this mechanism. A second experiment shows that the effect on food waste concerns is moderated by perishability and versatility but unaffected by convenience and healthiness. Overall, then, this research invites regulators and other professionals to rethink their stance on price promotions and work with retailers to design smart campaigns that motivate waste awareness and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]