Essays on retail operations

The intensified competition that the retail industry faces with the increasing numbers of new players in both the local and global markets has forced retailers to critically examine and redesign their operations and marketing strategies. To remain competitive, many retailers have focused on the provision of enhanced customer experience and pursued practices of differentiation. In this dissertation comprising of three essays, we attempt to shed light on retail practices that enhance consumer valuation, on factors that affect store performance, and on temporal management of demand enhancing activities using both analytical and empirical methodologies. The aim of this research is to develop theoretical insights to help retailers understand their store performance and effectively manage strategies geared towards enhancing demand and consumer valuation about their product offerings. In the first essay, we focus on technology investments that can affect consumer valuation. We examine the impact of such investments in a duopoly setting in which retailers compete in prices and consumers can search among the two retailers. In the second essay, we focus on store performance and examine the impact of labor and traffic characteristics on different store performance metrics using proprietary data of a retail chain. In the third essay, we focus on general services that retailers could provide to enhance demand and examine their temporal management under competition and demand uncertainty

Ionic Liquid-Modified Porous Materials for Gas Separation and Heterogeneous Catalysis

This work examines important physicochemical and thermophysical properties of ultrathin ionic liquid (IL) layers under confinement into the pore structure of siliceous supports and brings significant advances toward understanding the effects of these properties on the gas separation and catalytic performance of the developed supported ionic liquid phase (SILP) and solid catalysts with ionic liquid layers (SCILL). SILPs were developed by making use of functionalized and nonfunctionalized ILs, such as 1-(silylpropyl)-3-methyl-imidazolium hexafluorophosphate and 1-butyl-3-methyl-imidazolium hexafluorophosphate ILs, whereas the SCILL was prepared by effectively dispersing gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) onto the IL layers inside the open pores of the SILP. The information derived from the gas absorption/diffusivity and heterogeneous catalysis experiments was exemplified in relation to the liquid crystalline ordering and orientation of the IL molecules, investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and modulated differential scanning calorimetry (MDSC). The extent of pore blocking was elucidated with small angle neutron scattering (SANS) and was proven to be a decisive factor for the gas separation efficiency of the SILPs. CO₂/CO separation values above 50 were obtained in cases where liquid crystalline ordering of the IL layers and extended pore blocking had occurred. The presence of the IL layer in the developed SCILL assisted the formation of ultrasmall (2–3 nm) and well-stabilized AuNPs. The low-temperature CO oxidation efficiency was 22%. The catalytic experiments showed an additional functionality of the IL, acting as an “in-situ trap” that abstracts the product (CO₂) from the reaction site and improves yield