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OR FORUM--Rocket Science Retailing: The 2006 Philip McCord Morse Lecture

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  • Marshall Fisher

    (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104)

Abstract

Retailing is a huge industry. In the United States, retail business represents about 40% of the economy and is the largest employer. Retail supply chain management is still more art than science, but this is changing rapidly as retailers begin to apply analytic models to the huge volume of data they are collecting on consumer purchases and preferences. This industry-wide movement resembles the transformation of Wall Street that occurred in the 1970s when physicists and other “rocket scientists” applied their analytic skills to investment decisions. The Consortium for Operational Excellence in Retailing (COER) (codirected by Ananth Raman, Harvard Business School, and myself) is a group of academics working with about 50 leading retailers to assess their progress towards rocket science retailing and to accelerate that progress through selected research projects. After some brief comments on the current state of industry practice in retail supply chain management, this paper will describe examples of COER research in four areas: assortment planning, pricing, inventory optimization, and store execution.

Suggested Citation

  • Marshall Fisher, 2009. "OR FORUM--Rocket Science Retailing: The 2006 Philip McCord Morse Lecture," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 57(3), pages 527-540, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:57:y:2009:i:3:p:527-540
    DOI: 10.1287/opre.1090.0704
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Juin-Kuan Chong & Teck-Hua Ho & Christopher S. Tang, 2001. "A Modeling Framework for Category Assortment Planning," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 3(3), pages 191-210, January.
    2. Nicole DeHoratius & Ananth Raman, 2008. "Inventory Record Inaccuracy: An Empirical Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(4), pages 627-641, April.
    3. Marshall Fisher & Kumar Rajaram, 2000. "Accurate Retail Testing of Fashion Merchandise: Methodology and Application," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 19(3), pages 266-278, June.
    4. H. Leibenstein, 1950. "Bandwagon, Snob, and Veblen Effects in the Theory of Consumers' Demand," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 64(2), pages 183-207.
    5. Marshall Fisher & Kumar Rajaram & Ananth Raman, 2001. "Optimizing Inventory Replenishment of Retail Fashion Products," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 3(3), pages 230-241, November.
    6. Marshall Fisher & Ananth Raman, 1996. "Reducing the Cost of Demand Uncertainty Through Accurate Response to Early Sales," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 44(1), pages 87-99, February.
    7. Paul E. Green & Abba M. Krieger, 1985. "Models and Heuristics for Product Line Selection," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 4(1), pages 1-19.
    8. A. Gürhan Kök & Marshall L. Fisher, 2007. "Demand Estimation and Assortment Optimization Under Substitution: Methodology and Application," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 55(6), pages 1001-1021, December.
    9. Stephen A. Smith & Narendra Agrawal, 2000. "Management of Multi-Item Retail Inventory Systems with Demand Substitution," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 48(1), pages 50-64, February.
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    Cited by:

    1. Victor Martínez-de-Albéniz & Ana Valdivia, 2019. "Measuring and Exploiting the Impact of Exhibition Scheduling on Museum Attendance," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 21(4), pages 761-779, October.
    2. KEGELART, Tanguy & VAN VYVE, Mathieu, 2014. "A conic optimization approach for SKU rationalization," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014034, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    3. Hense, Jonas & Hübner, Alexander, 2022. "Assortment optimization in omni-channel retailing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 301(1), pages 124-140.
    4. Alexander Hübner & Kai Schaal, 2017. "Effect of replenishment and backroom on retail shelf-space planning," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 10(1), pages 123-156, June.

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