Online retailers are on a consistent drive to increase on-time delivery and reduce customer lead-time. However, in reality, an increasing share of consumers place orders early. Such Advance Demand Information can be deployed strategically to reduce costs and improve the customer service...

Millions of nanostores serve bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers in emerging markets. Their suppliers, consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, struggle with high operational costs that largely stem from shopkeepers’ liquidity constraints. We empirically investigate whether suppliers can improve...

Millions of nanostores around the world face the prospect of digitization, which promises to create significant operational benefits. At the same time, however, digitization may be a risky endeavor. Through the application of a survey and experiments in the field with hundreds of shopkeepers, we...

Expected demand is an important measure for a retailer to decide whether to open a new store at a candidate location. Retail chains need to understand the store choice and temporal preferences of different customer segments to estimate future customer visits to such a new store. As mixed-use...