scholarly journals SHORT-TERM CALCULATION OF ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY OF RETAIL REVERSE LOGISTICS SYSTEMS

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (198) ◽  
pp. 24-31
Author(s):  
R.M. Beysenbaev ◽  

The current market environment of retail trade enterprises indicates the need for accounting and management of reverse logistics, regardless of the size of the retailer. In 2020, only in the United States, retailers' losses from product returns amounted to about 400 billion dollars. More liberal return policies and a growing online sales market lead to more returned products and an increase in the volume of losses from returns, and it seems possible to believe that these trends will continue in the coming years, which indicates the need for retailers to have a way to assess the economical effectiveness of their systematic interaction with return flows in order to make management decisions on an objective and reliable information basis.

Author(s):  
Ioana Olariu

This article is a theoretical approach on retail reverse logistics. Environmental concern and the current marketing strategy have spurred retailers to implement strategies to facilitate product returns from end customers. Reverse logistics, indicating the process of this return flow, encompasses such activities as the movement of returned products, facilities to accommodate returned items, and overall remedy process for returned items. The retail industry, under great competitive pressure, has used return policies as a competitive weapon. Grocery retailers were the first to begin to focus serious attention on the problem of returns and to develop reverse logistics innovations. Grocery retailers first developed innovations such as reclamation centers. Reclamation centers, in turn, led to the establishment of centralized return centers. Centralizing returns has led to significant benefits for most firms that have implemented them. Over the last several years, retailers have consolidated. Now, more than ever, reverse logistics is seen as being important. This reverse distribution activity can be crucial to the survival of companies, because the permanent goodwill of the company is at stake. Businesses succeed because they respond to both external and internal changes and adjust in an effective manner to remain competitive.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehmet Sekip Altug ◽  
Tolga Aydinliyim ◽  
Aditya Jain

Retailers use lenient return policies to stimulate demand and increase revenues, as such policies help customers assess uncertain product valuations at low (or no) return cost and yield higher equilibrium prices. However, generous refunds also yield unintended consequences such as opportunistic returns, which take place when customers intentionally rent a product for short-term use. Accounting for 11% of all product returns in the United States in 2017, opportunistic returns prompt retailers to seek tactics to address adverse revenue and cost implications. We consider two alternative proposals using a price- and refund-setting newsvendor framework with two customer types: honest returners and renters. The first proposal, targeted-refunds, uses retail analytics firms to distinguish renters from honest returners and implements return policies tailored for each segment. The second proposal, menu-of-refunds, presents customers multiple price-refund pairs and lets them self-select. We compare and contrast the optimal decisions and the profit implications of both proposals with respect to two benchmark settings: one without any renters and another proposal, uniform-refunds, wherein the retailer merely reoptimizes its decisions while acknowledging that renters exist. We characterize the conditions under which the menu-of-refunds proposal separates customer types and thus matching or exceeding the performance of the targeted-refunds proposal. Furthermore, we study several alternative model specifications to confirm that our main finding concerning the effectiveness of the menu-of-refunds proposal is robust. This paper was accepted by Vishal Gaur, operations management.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 1231-1242
Author(s):  
Celeste Domsch ◽  
Lori Stiritz ◽  
Jay Huff

Purpose This study used a mixed-methods design to assess changes in students' cultural awareness during and following a short-term study abroad. Method Thirty-six undergraduate and graduate students participated in a 2-week study abroad to England during the summers of 2016 and 2017. Quantitative data were collected using standardized self-report measures administered prior to departure and after returning to the United States and were analyzed using paired-samples t tests. Qualitative data were collected in the form of daily journal reflections during the trip and interviews after returning to the United States and analyzed using phenomenological methods. Results No statistically significant changes were evident on any standardized self-report measures once corrections for multiple t tests were applied. In addition, a ceiling effect was found on one measure. On the qualitative measures, themes from student transcripts included increased global awareness and a sense of personal growth. Conclusions Measuring cultural awareness poses many challenges. One is that social desirability bias may influence responses. A second is that current measures of cultural competence may exhibit ceiling or floor effects. Analysis of qualitative data may be more useful in examining effects of participation in a short-term study abroad, which appears to result in decreased ethnocentrism and increased global awareness in communication sciences and disorders students. Future work may wish to consider the long-term effects of participation in a study abroad for emerging professionals in the field.


2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 46-82
Author(s):  
Fathi Malkawi

This paper addresses some of the Muslim community’s concerns regarding its children’s education and reflects upon how education has shaped the position of other communities in American history. It argues that the future of Muslim education will be influenced directly by the present realities and future trends within American education in general, and, more importantly, by the well-calculated and informed short-term and long-term decisions and future plans taken by the Muslim community. The paper identifies some areas in which a wellestablished knowledge base is critical to making decisions, and calls for serious research to be undertaken to furnish this base.


Author(s):  
Frank E. Vandervort ◽  
Vincent J. Palusci

Substance abuse is a major medical and social problem. Estimates suggest that each year some 15 percent of the 4 million babies born in the United States are exposed to drugs or alcohol. Research demonstrates that exposure to these substances is harmful to the children in both the short term and across their developmental trajectory. This chapter summarizes the harms that might result from such prenatal exposure and considers the ways that both federal and state law respond to this. The chapter argues for universal drug testing of newborns in an effort to ascertain whether they have been prenatally exposed to such substances so that treatment and other services can be provided.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 237802312098032
Author(s):  
Brandon G. Wagner ◽  
Kate H. Choi ◽  
Philip N. Cohen

In the social upheaval arising from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, we do not yet know how union formation, particularly marriage, has been affected. Using administration records—marriage certificates and applications—gathered from settings representing a variety of COVID-19 experiences in the United States, the authors compare counts of recorded marriages in 2020 against those from the same period in 2019. There is a dramatic decrease in year-to-date cumulative marriages in 2020 compared with 2019 in each case. Similar patterns are observed for the Seattle metropolitan area when analyzing the cumulative number of marriage applications, a leading indicator of marriages in the near future. Year-to-date declines in marriage are unlikely to be due solely to closure of government agencies that administer marriage certification or reporting delays. Together, these findings suggest that marriage has declined during the COVID-19 outbreak and may continue to do so, at least in the short term.


Modern Italy ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raffaella A. Del Sarto ◽  
Nathalie Tocci

Focusing on Italy's Middle East policies under the second Berlusconi (2001–2006) and the second Prodi (2006–2008) governments, this article assesses the manner and extent to which the observed foreign policy shifts between the two governments can be explained in terms of the rebalancing between a ‘Europeanist’ and a transatlantic orientation. Arguing that Rome's policy towards the Middle East hinges less on Italy's specific interests and objectives in the region and more on whether the preference of the government in power is to foster closer ties to the United States or concentrate on the European Union, the analysis highlights how these swings of the pendulum along the EU–US axis are inextricably linked to a number of underlying structural weaknesses of Rome's foreign policy. In particular, the oscillations can be explained by the prevalence of short-term political (and domestic) considerations and the absence of long-term, substantive political strategies, or, in short, by the phenomenon of ‘politics without policy’ that often characterises Italy's foreign policy.


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