Informs 2015

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INFORMS Philadelphia – 2015
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2 - Design of Financial Incentive Programs to Promote Net Zero
Energy Buildings
Alireza Ghalebani, Doctoral Candidate, University of South
Florida, 4202 East Fowler Avenue, ENB 118, Tampa, FL, 33620,
United States of America, , Tapas K. Das
Promoting net zero energy buildings (NZEB) is among key carbon emissions
reduction approaches in the U.S. and in the EU countries. We present a mixed
integer programming (MIP) model to aid determining the minimum thresholds of
financial incentives that would spur growth in NZEBs. The results indicate the
threshold values of the incentive program parameters, and show that these
thresholds are highly influenced by the levelized cost of electricity from RE and
are independent of load profiles.
3 - Environmental Consequences of Inventory Stockout Decisions
Hongyan Liang, Kent State University, 800 E Summit Street,
Kent, OH, 44240, United States of America, ,
Alfred Guiffrida, Eddy Patuwo
The literature on sustainable inventory management has focused on the carbon
footprint with inventory management decisions.Emergence orders are issued to
correct a stockout occurrence. The majority of emergency orders involve
transportation by motor carriers, which impacts the environment through the
carbon footprint. Models for examining the decision to backorder do not address
environmental concerns, hence a research opportunity exists to reexamine the
decision to backorder or stockout.
4 - A Multi-modal Inventory System with Lead Time
Dependent Demands
Emre Berk, Bilkent University, Management Faculty, 06800
Bilkent, Ankara, Turkey, , Ozgur Toy,
Onurcan Ayas
We consider an inventory system facing slow moving demand with multi-modal
transport opportunities. Customers have waiting time tolerances in cases of stock-
outs and societal-impact considerations (e.g., carbon emission sensitivities) for the
units they purchase. We investigate mode selection and service contract design.
We provide some structural results and numerical examples.
5 - On Variability of Global Annual Mean Temperature
Xiaoyue Jiang, Tulane University, Department of Computer
Science, New Orleans, LA, 70118, United States of America,
Brent Venable, Leiwen Jiang
A “model-free” analysis of global annual mean temperature anomalies
(HadCRUT4, from 1850-2014) is developed. By capturing the maximum
variability across all time scales covered by the dataset, this envelope-based
characterization confirms some widely accepted, in the meantime, strongly
disputed understandings and offers new and objective insights and interpretation
to future climate change trajectory.
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46-Room 104A, CC
Studies in Customer Queuing Behavior
Sponsor: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt/Service Operations
Sponsored Session
Chair: Robert Batt, Asst. Professor, Wisconsin School of Business, UW-
Madison, 975 University Ave., Grainger Hall, 5279, Madison, WI,
53706, United States of America,
Co-Chair: Laurens Debo, Associate Professor, Dartmouth College,
100 Tuck Hall, Hanover, NH, 03755, United States of America,
1 - Managing Customer Expectations and Priorities with
Delay Announcements
Gad Allon, Professor, Kellogg School of Management,
Northwestern University, 2001 Sheridan Road,
Evanston, IL, 60201, United States of America,
, Achal Bassamboo, Qiuping Yu
We study in a service environment, how to manage customers’ expectations and
to prioritize customers appropriately to maximize the firm’s profits. Specifically,
we focus on a setting where the firm uses only delay announcements and study
the opportunities and limitations of this mechanism. We are particularly
interested in when and how the customers can be influenced by delay
announcements.
2 - Searching for Better Quality and a Shorter Wait
Luyi Yang, Doctoral Student, University of Chicago Booth School
of Business, Chicago, IL, United States of America
Laurens Debo, Varun Gupta
We consider a many-server queueing system in which servers have different
qualities. The customer does not know either the quality of the server or its
queue length in advance, and is thus engaged in a costly sequential search. We
characterize the equilibrium search behavior. We find that reducing the search
cost may increase the expected waiting time while increasing the arrival rate may
decrease it.
3 - Observational Learning in Congested Environments with Multiple
Choice Options
Chen Jin, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road,
Evanston, IL, 60208, United States of America,
Laurens Debo,
Mirko Kremer, Seyed Iravani
We study human choice behavior in a congested multi-location system with
quality variation among locations and information asymmetry among
sequentially arrived customers, i.e. some customers are informed and know the
quality of all locations while others don’t (uninformed). Customers all observe
the queue length at each location upon arrival. We specify conditions under
which uninformed customers join longest queue and join shortest non-empty
queue. We also test the results in the laboratory.
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47-Room 104B, CC
Consumer Returns Management in Retailing
Sponsor: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt/Sustainable
Operations
Sponsored Session
Chair: Guangzhi Shang, Assistant Professor, Florida State University,
College of Business, RBB354, Tallahassee, FL, 32306,
United States of America,
1 - Does a Better Customer Experience Reduce Consumer Returns?
An Empirical Study using Data Analytics
Necati Ertekin, Texas A&M University, Mays Business School,
College Station, TX, 77840, United States of America,
, Michael Ketzenberg, Gregory Heim
This study contributes to the understanding of consumer return behavior by
examining the association between in-store customer experience (i.e. product
quality, service quality, and customer satisfaction) during a purchase and a
subsequent return. Our analysis reveals surprising findings for retailers. For
instance, we demonstrate that retail efforts such as increasing salespeople
competence and improving store environment that are so long believed to
prevent returns may indeed induce returns.
2 - Intertemporal Pricing and Return Policies in the Presence of
Strategic Consumers
Wenbo Selina Cai, Assistant Professor, New Jersey Institute of
Technology, , Ying-ju Chen
Pricing and return policies are crucial decisions that affect online retailers’
profitability when dealing with strategic consumers. We develop a model that
considers heterogeneous consumer valuations, valuation uncertainties, and
strategic purchasing behaviors, and derive the optimal joint pricing and return
policy for a retailer in a dynamic pricing framework. We discuss the implications
of a generous return policy, and show that returns can help retailers facilitate
market segmentation.
3 - An Empirical Investigation of Return Drivers: Reducing Consumer
Returns in the Era of Generous Refunds
Guangzhi Shang, Assistant Professor, Florida State University,
College of Business, RBB354, Tallahassee, FL, 32306, United
States of America, , Mark Ferguson,
Michael Galbreth
We empirically study drivers of whether and when to return. Our results informs
retailers’ return management along two dimensions: 1) how to target buyer
assistance, and 2) how to customize return time window.
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