The Newsvendor Problem with Different Delivery Time, Resalable Returns, and an Additional Order

In a B2C scenario, the retailer is confronted with two kinds of demand. One requires an immediate delivery after placing an order, while the other prefers a delayed shipment due to some personal reasons. Considering demands for different delivery time, we explore a newsvendor model with resalable returns and an additional order to optimize the procurement decision under a stochastic demand distribution. The impact of the proportion of the instant delivery needs and the return rate on the order quantity and the expected profit is illustrated through numerical tests. It is shown that the expected profit decreases as the ratios of immediate delivery needs and returned products increase. Besides, if the sum of the percentage of the instant delivery needs and the return rate is less than 1, the expected profit is always greater than the result if the sum of them is equal to or greater than 1. Management implications are also discussed

How Social Communications Influence Advertising Perception and Response in Online Communities?

This research aims to explore how social communications of online communities affect users’ perception and responses toward social media advertising. We developed a conceptual model based on the SBT, encapsulating 9 constructs and 10 hypothesis extracted from the extant social media advertising literature. Our research outcome proves that social communications can effectively boost users’ behaviors to be in accordance with an online social community, thus facilitate their acceptance and responses toward social media advertising, with users’ group intention as an intervening factor. From an operational standpoint, it’s an effective way to build and maintain social bonds between users and the community by boosting social communications, supporting fluent interpersonal communications. In addition, managers of an online community should elaborate on users’ group intentions to increase users’ advertising acceptance and response

Does Relationship Quality Matter in Consumer Ethical Decision Making? Evidence from China

consumer ethical belief, consumer unethical behavior, relationship quality,

Complementarity and Cannibalization of Offline-to-Online Targeting: A Field Experiment on Omnichannel Commerce

As the online channel is crucially important, traditional offline retail stores seek to induce their existing consumers to buy online with incentives (i.e., offline-to-online targeting). However, it is debatable whether such targeting is truly effective. While advocates argue that online shopping should complement a firm’s store channel, critics counter that doing so may result in cannibalization. Drawing on the channel interplay literature and considering customers’ travel costs, we examine whether and how inducing online shopping complements or cannibalizes a firm’s offline sales. Using a randomized field experiment on over 11,200 customers of a large department store, we provide causal evidence for both the complementarity and cannibalization effects of online and offline channels. Offline-to-online targeting engenders higher online purchases (as intended) than no targeting. The local average treatment effects models suggest that once induced to buy online, consumers who live near the retailer’s physical store tend to increase their offline spending and total sales by 47% (i.e., complementarity effects for nearby consumers). However, for consumers who live far away from the brick-and-mortar store, inducing them to buy online can backfire by reducing offline and total sales by approximately 5.7% for each additional kilometer of distance (i.e., cannibalization effects for distant consumers). Explorations of these mechanisms suggest that distant consumers who are induced to buy online may fail to return to shop in the offline store and purchase less experiential category products with a smaller basket size than other customers, thus leading to a negative net impact on the total sales. These findings alert managers to the dangers of improper targeting and investment in information technology and the importance of consumer heterogeneity for omnichannel commerce across online and offline channels

Numerical and Experimental Investigations of Micro Thermal Performance in a Tube with Delta Winglet Pairs

In this research, a novel vortex generator (VG) is presented. The experimental and numerical investigations were carried out to study the micro thermal-hydraulic performance in a heated tube. The numerical results showed that the fluid in the core flow region and the near-wall region was fully mixed because of the longitudinal vortices created by the vortex generators. In addition, the experimental results showed that the heat transfer coefficient (h) decreased with the increasing pitch ratio (PR) value, while the friction coefficient exhibited the opposite trend. With the increasing ration angle (RA) numbers, the h values decreased while the f numbers increased. In addition, the maximum and minimum values of the fraction ratio were 1.66 and 4.27, while these values of the Nusselt number ratio were 1.24 and 1.83. The maximum thermal enhancement factor (TEF) was 1.21 when PR = 0.5, RA = 0° and Re = 9090. The heat transfer enhancement mechanism of the vortex generator is explained from the microscopic point of view