The Future of Retail Operations

Retailing consists of all the activities associated with the selling of goods to the final consumer. In this article, we review the research on retail operations published in Manufacturing & Service Operations Research (M&SOM) since 1999. We then discuss the current retail landscape and the new research directions it offers, in which M&SOM can play a prominent role

Boston Hospitality Review: Fall 2018 

Table of contents: Airbnb and the Hotel Industry: The Past, Present, and Future of Sales, Marketing, Branding, and Revenue Management By Makarand Mody and Monica Gomez -- Creating Community One Meal at a Time By Dana Searle -- Restaurant Delivery: Are the "ODP" the Industry's "OTA"? Part I & II By Christopher Muller -- My Head in the Clouds (Computing): A Case Study of a Restaurant Group Embracing Off-Site Technology By Tyler Titheringto

Privacy Management and Optimal Pricing in People-Centric Sensing

With the emerging sensing technologies such as mobile crowdsensing and Internet of Things (IoT), people-centric data can be efficiently collected and used for analytics and optimization purposes. This data is typically required to develop and render people-centric services. In this paper, we address the privacy implication, optimal pricing, and bundling of people-centric services. We first define the inverse correlation between the service quality and privacy level from data analytics perspectives. We then present the profit maximization models of selling standalone, complementary, and substitute services. Specifically, the closed-form solutions of the optimal privacy level and subscription fee are derived to maximize the gross profit of service providers. For interrelated people-centric services, we show that cooperation by service bundling of complementary services is profitable compared to the separate sales but detrimental for substitutes. We also show that the market value of a service bundle is correlated with the degree of contingency between the interrelated services. Finally, we incorporate the profit sharing models from game theory for dividing the bundling profit among the cooperative service providers.Comment: 16 page

External Forces That Impact Profitability in the Insurance Industry

The insurance industry is influenced by many factors that impact profitability. Insurers must do their best to make predictions based on expectations to remain solvent and profitable. Inevitably, they are faced with external factors that are outside of their control. Insurers must be aware of these external forces that may impact profits. External forces impact entire sub-industries of the insurance industry and some companies maintain profitability while others fail. This work intends to take a look at the major external forces that each insurance sub-industry faces and discuss some of the potential solutions that have been developed to minimize the negative impact of these forces, if applicable

On the interaction between Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand systems and the power network: models and coordination algorithms

We study the interaction between a fleet of electric, self-driving vehicles servicing on-demand transportation requests (referred to as Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand, or AMoD, system) and the electric power network. We propose a model that captures the coupling between the two systems stemming from the vehicles' charging requirements and captures time-varying customer demand and power generation costs, road congestion, battery depreciation, and power transmission and distribution constraints. We then leverage the model to jointly optimize the operation of both systems. We devise an algorithmic procedure to losslessly reduce the problem size by bundling customer requests, allowing it to be efficiently solved by off-the-shelf linear programming solvers. Next, we show that the socially optimal solution to the joint problem can be enforced as a general equilibrium, and we provide a dual decomposition algorithm that allows self-interested agents to compute the market clearing prices without sharing private information. We assess the performance of the mode by studying a hypothetical AMoD system in Dallas-Fort Worth and its impact on the Texas power network. Lack of coordination between the AMoD system and the power network can cause a 4.4% increase in the price of electricity in Dallas-Fort Worth; conversely, coordination between the AMoD system and the power network could reduce electricity expenditure compared to the case where no cars are present (despite the increased demand for electricity) and yield savings of up $147M/year. Finally, we provide a receding-horizon implementation and assess its performance with agent-based simulations. Collectively, the results of this paper provide a first-of-a-kind characterization of the interaction between electric-powered AMoD systems and the power network, and shed additional light on the economic and societal value of AMoD.Comment: Extended version of the paper presented at Robotics: Science and Systems XIV and accepted by TCNS. In Version 4, the body of the paper is largely rewritten for clarity and consistency, and new numerical simulations are presented. All source code is available (MIT) at https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.324165

On the interaction between Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand systems and the power network: models and coordination algorithms

We study the interaction between a fleet of electric, self-driving vehicles servicing on-demand transportation requests (referred to as Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand, or AMoD, system) and the electric power network. We propose a model that captures the coupling between the two systems stemming from the vehicles' charging requirements and captures time-varying customer demand and power generation costs, road congestion, battery depreciation, and power transmission and distribution constraints. We then leverage the model to jointly optimize the operation of both systems. We devise an algorithmic procedure to losslessly reduce the problem size by bundling customer requests, allowing it to be efficiently solved by off-the-shelf linear programming solvers. Next, we show that the socially optimal solution to the joint problem can be enforced as a general equilibrium, and we provide a dual decomposition algorithm that allows self-interested agents to compute the market clearing prices without sharing private information. We assess the performance of the mode by studying a hypothetical AMoD system in Dallas-Fort Worth and its impact on the Texas power network. Lack of coordination between the AMoD system and the power network can cause a 4.4% increase in the price of electricity in Dallas-Fort Worth; conversely, coordination between the AMoD system and the power network could reduce electricity expenditure compared to the case where no cars are present (despite the increased demand for electricity) and yield savings of up $147M/year. Finally, we provide a receding-horizon implementation and assess its performance with agent-based simulations. Collectively, the results of this paper provide a first-of-a-kind characterization of the interaction between electric-powered AMoD systems and the power network, and shed additional light on the economic and societal value of AMoD.Comment: Extended version of the paper presented at Robotics: Science and Systems XIV, in prep. for journal submission. In V3, we add a proof that the socially-optimal solution can be enforced as a general equilibrium, a privacy-preserving distributed optimization algorithm, a description of the receding-horizon implementation and additional numerical results, and proofs of all theorem

MEASURING STRATEGIC INTENT IN THE SOUTH TEXAS FOOD MARKETING INDUSTRY

Binomial and multinomial logit analysis is applied to data collected from questionnaires to measure strategic intent in the food marketing industry. Questions were framed based on data from the U.S. Department of Commerce's "County Business Patterns" reports and from best-practice studies. Question topics were placed into a competitive strategy framework following the 1998 work of Porter. Results indicate a strategic focus on outbound logistics and market pricing at the direct value level. Indirect activities focus on human capacity and firm infrastructure, particularly expanding internationally. Firms are adopting information technologies as a competitive strategy, and are doing so as part of a combined strategy to develop human assets.food marketing, industrial organization, information technology, strategy, Marketing,