题　目：Managing the personalized order-holding problem in online retailing

嘉　宾：林云峰，教授，新加坡管理大学李光前商学院

主持人：孙海龙 助理教授 上海交通大学安泰经济与管理学院

时　间：2023年8月3日（周四）16:00-17:30pm

地　点：安泰楼B207

内容简介:

A significant percentage of online consumers place consecutive orders within a short duration. To reduce the total order arrangement cost, an online retailer may consolidate consecutive orders from the same consumer. We investigate how long the retailer should hold the consumer's orders before sending them to a third-party logistics provider (3PL) for processing. In this order-holding problem, we optimize the holding time to balance the total order arrangement cost and the potential delay in delivery. We model the order-holding problem as a Markov Decision Process. We show that the optimal order-holding decisions follow a threshold-type policy that is straightforward to implement: Hold any pending orders if the holding time is within a threshold, or send them to the 3PL otherwise. Whenever the consumer places a new order, the holding time is reset and the threshold is updated based on a cumulative set of her past consecutive orders in her shopping journey. Using a consumer’s sequential decision model, we personalize the threshold by finding its closed-form expression in the consumer’s order features. We determine the model's coefficients and evaluate the threshold-type policy using the data of the 2020 MSOM Data Driven Research Challenge. Extensive numerical experiments suggest that the personalized threshold-type policy outperforms two commonly-used benchmarks by having fewer order arrangements or shorter holding times. Furthermore, personalizing the order-holding decisions is significantly more valuable for "enterprise" customers. Our research suggests a higher threshold for consumers who are more likely to place consecutive orders within a short duration. The consumers’ demographic information has a significant effect on the threshold. Specifically, the threshold is higher for "plus" consumers, female consumers, and consumers in the age group of 16-25. The threshold for tier-1 cities is lower than that for tier-2 to tier-4 cities but higher than that for tier-5 cities.

演讲人简介：

Yun Fong LIM is Professor of Operations Management at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University (SMU). He is also Academic Director of the MSc in Management (MiM) Program at SMU. He has been a Chang Jiang Chair Professor, Lee Kong Chian Fellow, MPA Research Fellow, and NOL Fellow. Yun Fong’s research has appeared in Operations Research, Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, and Production and Operations Management. He has delivered keynote and plenary speeches in several international conferences. In addition, his work has received funding by MOE, A*STAR, and NNSF, and media coverage by The Business Times, CNA938, and Channel 8. His current research interests include e-commerce and marketplace analytics, online platforms, warehousing and fulfillment, sustainable urban logistics, and flexible workforce and resource management. Yun Fong serves as Senior Editor for Production and Operations Management and Associate Editor for Naval Research Logistics. He has placed his PhD students and postdoc to CUHK (Shenzhen), USTC, and SUSS. Yun Fong is a recipient of the SMU Teaching Excellence Innovative Teacher Award. He teaches both undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Operations Management. He has provided consulting service and executive development to corporations such as Alibaba, Maersk, McMaster-Carr Company, Resorts World Sentosa, Schneider Electrics, Temasek Holdings, and Zalora. Yun Fong obtained both his PhD and MSc degrees in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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