2016 INFORMS Annual Meeting Program

SA37

INFORMS Nashville – 2016

3 - Analyzing The Impact Of Surgical Process Changes On Patient Flow Justin Kistler, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, United States, justin.kistler@grad.moore.sc.edu Ramkumar Janakiraman, Vikram Tiwari, Subodha Kumar Leveraging unique patient level encounter data through econometric techniques, we examine the impact of two process changes on surgical operations at a medical center. Building on management and operations literature, we posit that a process change, and a subsequent intra-operative IT enabled process change, will significantly improve surgical operations flow time. Given the high opportunity cost of resources associated with surgical procedures, this finding has important implications for surgical process owners and participants. SA35 205A-MCC Adversiting, Trade-ins, and Distribution Channels Sponsored: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt, Chair: Shuya Yin, University of California-Irvine, Merage School of Business, Irvine, CA, 92697, United States, shuya.yin@uci.edu Co-Chair: Rachel Rong Chen, University of California-Davis, Graduate School of Management, Davis, CA, 95616, United States, rachen@ucdavis.edu 1 - Exploring The Rational Behind Outlet Stores Jiaru Bai, University of California, Irvine, jiarub@uci.edu, Haresh Gurnani, Shuya Yin Outlet stores have been both complementary to and competing with the main stores. In this project, our goal is to understand the tradeoffs involved in offering outlet stores. In particular, we study how much differentiation should be kept between the main and outlet stores from three perspectives: price, product and location. 2 - Fit-revelation Sampling And Advertising: Complementary Or Substitutable? Rachel Rong Chen, University of California-Davis, Davis, CA, United States, rachen@ucdavis.edu, Shiming Deng, Lingli Wu Buyers are often uncertain about how a product fits their individual preferences. In such situations, fit-revelation sampling can be offered to allow consumers to resolve such uncertainties before purchase. When advertising is jointly offered, fit-revelation sampling may have a correction effect that could enhance or weaken the valuation added by advertisements. This paper studies the profit implications of the interactions between advertising and fit-revelation sampling. 3 - Replenishment Strategies For Micro-retailers In Developing Countries Sean Zhou, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, zhoux@baf.cuhk.edu.hk, Christopher S. Tang, Kairen Zhang When formal distribution channels are absent in developing countries, micro- retailers travel long distances to replenish their stocks directly from key suppliers. We examine a model where multiple competing retailers collectively determine the replenishment strategy among three possible strategies: informal, formal, and hybrid. We show that when the stores engage in quantity competition, the hybrid strategy maximizes the retailers’ total welfare when either the travel cost is sufficiently high or the fixed operating costs are sufficiently low. Data-driven Operations Management Research Sponsored: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt, Supply Chain Sponsored Session Chair: Fuqiang Zhang, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, United States, zhang@olin.wustl.edu Co-Chair: Tianjun Feng, Fudan University, Shanghai, China, tfeng@fudan.edu.cn 1 - An Empirical Investigation Of Network Effect In Automobile Sales Tianjun Feng, Fudan University, tfeng@fudan.edu.cn, Fuqiang Zhang, Peiwen Yu This paper investigates the network effect in automobile sales by using a unique dataset from a large city in China. We demonstrate the existence of a positive but diminishing marginal effect of the local owner base on the sales of automobiles. Service Operations Sponsored Session SA36 205B-MCC

2 - The Operational Value Of Social Media Information Dennis Zhang, Northwestern University, 1500 Chicago Avenue, Apt.712, Evanston, IL, 60201, United States, j-zhang@kellogg.northwestern.edu, Antonio Moreno-Garcia, Ruomeng Cui, Santiago Gallino This paper empirically studies whether using publicly available social media information can improve the accuracy of daily sales forecasts. We collaborated with an online apparel retailer to implement a variety of machine learning methods to create daily sales forecasts. We find that using social media information results in statistically significant improvements in the out-of-sample accuracy of the forecasts, with relative improvements ranging from 12.85 percent to 23.23 percent over different forecast horizons. 3 - When You Work With A Super Man, Will You Also Fly? An Empirical Study Of The Impact Of Coworkers On Performance Serguei Netessine, INSEAD, serguei.netessine@insead.edu Fangyun Tan We examine a large operational data set in a casual restaurant setting to study how coworkers’ sales ability (measured as servers’ sales premium) affects workers’ performance in terms of service speed and service quality. We find that servers react non-linearly to their coworkers’ ability. In particular, when coworkers’ overall sales ability is low, increasing this ability may trigger servers to redouble both upselling and cross-selling efforts at the expense of slower service speed. Our empirical findings imply that managers should mix servers having heterogeneous ability levels during the same shift.

4 - Ceo Overconfidence And Inventory Management Fuqiang Zhang, Washington University in St. Louis, zhang@olin.wustl.edu, Tianjun Feng, Qing Zhang

Using the data of the US-listed companies in the manufacturing industry during 1999-2011, this study empirically investigates the relationship between CEO overconfidence and firms’ operations efficiency. Specifically, we focus on inventory turnover, a widely used operations efficiency measure for inventory management. We find that firms with overconfident CEOs are associated with higher inventory turnover.

SA37 205C-MCC

Operations in an Omnichannel World Sponsored: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt,

Service Operations Sponsored Session” Chair: Santiago Gallino, Dartmouth College, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, United States, santiago.gallino@tuck.dartmouth.edu Co-Chair: Antonio Moreno-Garcia, Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management, Evanston, IL, 60208, United States, a-morenogarcia@kellogg.northwestern.edu 1 - Impact Of Physical Retail Channel On Customers’ Online Purchase Behavior Anuj Kumar, University of Florida, akumar1@ufl.edu Amit Mehra, Subodha Kumar We use customer-level data of a large apparel retailer to estimate the treatment effect of store openings on the online purchase behavior of its existing customers. The retailer’s store openings resulted in a 29 percent increase in annual online purchase revenue of the existing customers. The increase in online purchases of existing customers after store opening could be attributed to: (1) higher engagement with the retailer from their higher store interactions and (2) availability of a low cost option of returning their online purchases in store if it does not fit their needs. The effect of store opening was found to be higher for customers who experience higher reduction in their store distances. 2 - When The Bank Comes To You: Branch Network And Custsomer Multi-channel Banking Behavior Vibhanshu Abhishek, Carnegie Mellon University, vibs@cmu.edu Beibei Li, Dan Geng Customers today increasingly interact with their banks using digital channels, lifting the necessity for banks to rethink the distribution of physical branches and customer behavior in a multi-channel environment. Using approximately 1.2M anonymized individual-level data from a large commercial bank in US over 6 years, our paper investigates the traditional channel - bank branches - and the impact of its network change (branch opening or closure) on customer multi- channel preferences and other banking behavior. Our results show that both branch opening and closure are associated with decreasing transactions through offline channels and increasing transactions in online banking.

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