报告题目：Buy Online and Return Instore in Omnichannel Operations

时间：11月23日（星期四）上午10:00-11:00

地点：中关村校区主楼409会议室

报告人：东南大学 薛巍立 教授

报告人简介：

薛巍立，东南大学教授、博导、经济12BET副经理。主要研究方向为品类与库存管理，数字化运营管理。在Management Science, Operations Research, Production and Operations Management, Transportation Science等管理科学国际主流SCI/SSCI发表论文40多篇。主持了包括国家自然科学基金优秀青年科学基金（2018年）、国家自然科学基金重点项目（2022年）在内的多项国家级和省部级项目；获得了江苏省哲学社会科学优秀成果三等奖等多个科研奖项。

报告内容简介：

In this paper, we develop a stylized model to study the value of buy online and return instore (BORS). Specifically, we consider a setting in which an online retailer and a physical store sell substitutable products and cooperate to provide consumers with a BORS option. We first characterize the consumers channel visiting behaviors with the introduction of BORS under exogenous selling prices, i.e., the return channel shift effect—online consumers who used to return online choose the return offline as an alternative, and the purchase channel shift effect—store consumers may switch to online by trying online products with delayed travel costs. Second, under endogenous selling prices, we find that BORS may mitigates channel competition when the uncertainty of online products is low. Such a mitigation reduces both channel shift effects due to the increased channel shift costs borne by consumers. Moreover, there could be a reverse purchase channel shift, in which online consumers visit the physical store directly at purchase stage. Finally, we show that BORS is more likely to achieve a “win-win” outcome when the online retailer shares a higher proportion of the return handling costs, as sharing more return handling costs enables the online retailer to alleviate channel competition and motivate the physical store to participate in BORS. Those above results are robust when both channels bargaining on the cost sharing ratio. Our findings can help firms understand the underlying mechanism of BORS and exploit BORS in an omnichannel setting.

（承办：管理与经济学院）