Problem Definition: How much, if at all, does training in product features increase a sales associate's sales productivity?Academic / Practical Relevance: A knowledgeable retail sales associate (SA) can explain the features of available product variants and give a customer sufficient confidence...

We describe a three-step process that a retailer can use to set retail store sales staff levels. First, use historical data on revenue and planned and actual staffing levels by store to estimate how revenue varies with the staffing level at each store. We disentangle the endogeneity between...

For online retailers who sell physical goods, every transaction has two main components: the physical product and the services by which the retailer facilitates the transaction. Delivery speed is arguably the most important service component for online retailers, and for this reason, many...

A retailer following a competition-based dynamic pricing strategy tracks competitors' price changes and then must answer the following questions: (1) Should we respond? (2) If so, respond to whom? (3) How much of a response? (4) And on which products? The answers require unbiased measures of...

We describe a methodology by which a retailer can identify action steps that are likely to increase sales and customer satisfaction and demonstrate the methodology using proprietary data from a large retailer with over 500 stores. We use monthly store-level data on a number of operational...

After the cost of goods sold, store labor expense is the largest cost component in the retailing industry. As a result, developing and executing labor plans is a key task for retailers. In this paper we use private data provided by a large retail chain to assess the relationship between labor...