Marshall Fisher - Faculty Research in Knowledge@Wharton

On the Clock: Are Retail Sales People Getting a Raw Deal?

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:54:21 EST

Ann Taylor Stores -- a New York-based retailer of upscale women's clothing -- is using a new computer scheduling system that assigns the busiest and most desirable hours to employees with the strongest sales numbers. Those with less success on the selling floor get far fewer and less desirable hours when new schedules are posted. While systems like these can help improve productivity, Wharton faculty and others warn that they are no substitute for hands-on management when it comes to dealing with workers.

Procurement -- Global Supply Chain Strategy

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:00:56 EST

Marshall L. Fisher, director of Wharton's Fishman-Davidson Center for Service and Operations Management, has been researching issues related to retail supply chain strategy for many years. In this interview, Fisher highlights some of the challenges facing global procurement, and he discusses the example of Luen Thai, a Chinese company that built a giant "supply-chain city," becoming a one-stop shop for clothing manufacturers looking to outsource to low-cost producers.

Out of Stock? It Might Be Your Employee Payroll -- Not Your Supply Chain -- That's to Blame

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 15:13:23 EST

Attention, shoppers: Did you find everything you were looking for? Retail customers who answer "yes" to this question might very well represent the Holy Grail to retail operators who want to increase their sales with only a modest increase in costs or, in some cases, increase sales by merely reallocating staff within a store at no extra cost. Impossible? Not according to a new study on retail store execution by Wharton operations and information management professors Marshall L. Fisher and Serguei Netessine, and Wharton doctoral student Jayanth Krishnan.

Supply Chain Enterprise Systems: The Silver Bullet?

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 15:05:07 EST

Supply Chain Enterprise Systems -- information, communication and management technologies that support supply chain functions -- have quickly become a central element of supply chain management strategy. But, implementing these systems is often a difficult undertaking with an uncertain outcome. For application of supply chain technology to be successful, experts from BCG and Wharton argue that certain elements need to be in place: namely, a clearly defined need based on supply chain strategy, as well as clear expectations about what such technologies can and cannot do for a company.

Avoiding the Cost of Inefficiency: Coordination and Collaboration in Supply Chain Management

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 15:05:15 EST

The process of getting the right product to the right place at the right time at the right price -- the traditional touchstones of supply chain success -- remains a challenging and often elusive goal. According to experts from BCG and Wharton, two key supply chain elements that are often taken for granted -- coordination and collaboration -- can mean the difference between the merely functioning and the profitable when it comes to procuring goods and services from vendors around the world and delivering them to global consumers as fast and inexpensively as possible.

Bring on Armani, Prada, and Other High-end Brands: Japanese Consumers Still Demand Quality

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 17:06:49 EST

In Tokyo's grand and sprawling department stores, the business day still begins with a ceremonial rite. Moments before the doors swing open, the store manager and key employees form a human tunnel inside the main entrance. As shoppers stream in, the employees bow deeply -- a sign of respect to the customers they will be serving. Japanese consumers continue to command this respect at home and in shopping capitals around the world, although more than a decade of recession and economic malaise has dampened the country's 1980s spending frenzy. Today's Japanese consumers have come through a retail evolution that has left them with more choices but a continuing devotion to quality and luxury brands, according to Wharton faculty and Japanese retail executives.

Christmas Creep: The Shopping Season Is Longer, but Is It Better?

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 17:04:17 EST

Call it "Christmas creep." Holiday decorations are going up earlier in stores with each passing year, seasonal merchandise gets stocked on shelves soon after Halloween, and Christmas-related commercials are appearing on TV long before Santa Claus makes his way through Manhattan in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. But is a longer Christmas season good for retailers? The phenomenon of an ever-earlier Christmas season is a boon to the people responsible for supply-chain management, according to operations experts at Wharton. But Wharton marketing scholars and other analysts say an extended Christmas season is something of a mixed bag. It may hold advantages, disadvantages -- or even no advantages -- for store owners.

Spreading Yourself Too Thin: The Atkins Diet and Other Fads

Wed, 19 Oct 2005 16:43:39 EST

The July bankruptcy of Atkins Nutritionals, the company founded by diet guru Robert Atkins, signalled the end of a low-carbohydrate craze some observers say is unrivalled in food marketing. At its peak, during 2003-2004, some 30 million Americans were following the Atkins diet, and 20% of shoppers said they had started buying certain products specifically because they were low-carbohydrate. Yet like any product fad -- from Pet Rocks to Beanie Babies -- the Atkins craze was marked by a rapid rise in popularity and an equally rapid decline. Knowledge@Wharton looks at the different patterns that fads follow, what factors cause their rise and fall, and what role consumers play in promoting, and then abandoning, the latest trend.

Delving into the Mystery of Customer Satisfaction: A Toyota for the Retail Market?

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 15:55:55 EST

It started out as an academic puzzle of sorts. The four researchers -- three of them from Wharton -- already knew that in the airline industry, customers and employees revere Southwest Airlines. In the computer industry, it's Dell, and in the auto industry it's Toyota. But when it comes to the retail industry, what company sets the standards for customer and employee satisfaction? It's a question that the four set out to answer earlier this year as part of two projects: The first, involving Wharton professors Serguei Netessine and Marshall Fisher and Wharton doctoral student Jayanth Krishnan, is called the "Wharton Project on Store Execution and the Quality of Customer Experience." The second, a closely-related initiative on the causes of stock outs, is being led by Daniel Corsten, from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Both projects have already found some unexpected results relating to customer satisfaction and retail performance.

When Will the Apparel Quota System Finally Go Out of Style?

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 16:12:24 EST

When import quotas on textile products coming into the United States ended January 1, 2005, under World Trade Organization agreements signed 10 years earlier, a flood of clothing poured in from China. Within months, the U.S. responded with restrictions on Chinese apparel imports. Yet according to Wharton faculty and industry executives, these restrictions will only delay, not end, the global move toward quota-free garment trade.

Boy Meets Girl: Gillette and P&G Hook up Their Brands

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 10:14:19 EST

The merger between Procter & Gamble and Gillette comes with the obvious chemistry of male and female product lines, but the two companies also share a culture of innovation and a history of cooperation, according to Wharton faculty and industry analysts. The combined entity will have annual sales of $60 billion and more than 200 brands. Of those 200, 21 have sales of more than $1 billion a year. Such increased market clout raises questions about the new company's impact on other consumer goods manufacturers, on retailers, and on brand strategy in general.

In the Tsunami's Wake: How Best to Respond

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 04:47:29 EST

Wharton professor Jean LeMaire came to Thailand last month to lead a seminar on insurance in Bangkok. Before the seminar even began, he would witness, from the uncomfortably close vantage point of a beach in Phuket, the kind of disaster that haunts insurers and humanitarian relief agencies for months to come -- the devastating Asian tsunami that is estimated to have killed more than 170,000 in 11 countries. The scale of the tragedy and the outpouring of concern from around the world have raised the tsunami to a new level of natural disaster, and calls for a new level of response.

Retailers Expect Strong Holiday Shopping

Wed, 05 Nov 2003 14:18:18 EST

Chances are good that Santa Claus will leave a nice gift under the tree of

America

’s retailing industry this holiday season, but stores shouldn’t expect anything too extravagant. While the consensus view of experts at Wharton and elsewhere is that holiday sales will be up this year compared with 2002, several factors, including the absence of a hot new toy or electronic gizmo, suggest that it will be a respectable, not a blockbuster, season.

The Price is Right, or Is It? Determining the Impact of Price on Sales

Wed, 05 Nov 2003 13:40:57 EST

When Wharton professor Marshall Fisher and colleague Vishal Gaur did a controlled pricing experiment in 18 stores belonging to the Zany Brainy retail toy chain, they came away with a surprising result. The experiment, which had been designed to measure how demand for three separate products varied with price, showed, among other things, that pricing is not always logical. In a paper entitled, “In-Store Experiments to Determine the Impact of Price on Sales,” Fisher and Gaur discuss their findings and present a methodology that they say will improve the accuracy of in-store testing.

Why Big-box Retailers Often Fumble in Their Global Growth Strategies

Wed, 26 Feb 2003 00:00:00 EST

In the growing world of global retail, merchandising behemoths are no longer confined by domestic boundaries. Formats vary, but many of the industry players operate so-called big-box retailers, such as discount stores, category killers, outlet stores and warehouse clubs, some occupying more than 200,000 square feet of space. How good are companies like Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Carrefour at selling abroad? Should their focus be on knowing the customer or on selling a unique concept?

With Billions of Bytes of Customer Data, How Can Retailers Be �Starved for Information�?

Wed, 16 Aug 2000 12:11:03 EST

These days, it seems that both traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers and online �e-tailers� are drowning in a sea of customer information, including data from online transactions, point-of-service scanners, membership programs and even sensor chips on shopping carts. The question is, with all this sophisticated technology on hand, why have department store markdowns over the last 20 years grown from 8% to 33% of sales? And why are customers still going away dissatisfied because what they want isn�t in stock? In an article entitled �Rocket Science Retailing Is Almost Here - Are You Ready?� in the July-August 2000 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Wharton operations professor Marshall Fisher and two co-authors take a hard look at why many retailers are �awash in data but starved for information.�