Future Demand Uncertainty In Personnel Scheduling: Investigating Deterministic Lookahead Policies Using Optimization And Simulation

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Roemer ◽  
Taieb Mellouli
Keyword(s):  
Demand Uncertainty ◽  
Personnel Scheduling ◽  
Optimization And Simulation ◽  
Future Demand

The value of crowdsourcing in apparel and fashion retail buying

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Omid Kamran-Disfani
Keyword(s):  
Demand Uncertainty ◽  
Subjective Assessment ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Product Categories ◽  
Fashion Products ◽  
Fashion Retail ◽  
Short Product ◽  
The University ◽  
Future Demand

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Apparel and fashion retail buyers are responsible for selecting and ordering products, on behalf of the retailer, to be sold to retailers' end-consumers. Compared to their counterparts in other retailing sectors, fashion buyers face unique challenges such as high demand uncertainty and volatility, seasonality, frequent changes in fashion trends, and short product life cycles. As previous trends rarely provide useful information for predicting future sales of trendy products, fashion buyers make a subjective assessment of products' future demand by relying on their intuition and perceived expertise. Industry reports show that fashion buyers' predictions are often far from the demand that is later realized causing loss of profits for retailers. In this dissertation. I argue that retailers can benefit from the Wisdom of the Crowd (WOC) in predicting future sales of fashion products. It is suggested that lay customers as a group can provide more accurate prediction of future demand of fashion products than individual fashion buyers. An empirical study is conducted to test this proposition involving two groups: professional fashion buyers (N=60) and lay customers (N=397). Customers predicted future sales of products in all six product categories that were used in the study. The prediction error, measured by MAPE, was reduced between 12 and 73 percent. The implication of these findings for retailers are discussed, and directions for implementing crowdsourcing in fashion buying to improve prediction accuracy are provided.

scholarly journals The strategic national infrastructure assessment of digital communications

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward J. Oughton ◽  
Zoraida Frias ◽  
Mischa Dohler ◽  
Jason Whalley ◽  
Douglas Sicker ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Demand Uncertainty ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Digital Communications ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Expert Elicitation ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Digital Ecosystem ◽  
Horizon Scanning ◽  
Future Demand

Purpose Public policy requires effective identification of the current and emerging issues being faced in industry and beyond. This paper aims to identify a set of key issues currently facing digital communications and reviews their relevance for the strategic provision of infrastructure, particularly within the UK context. Design/methodology/approach The methodology focusses on taking a horizon-scanning approach to obtaining current information from a range of authoritative decision makers across industry, government and academia. After structuring the issues identified, these areas are explored by a multi-disciplinary research team covering engineering, economics and computer science. Findings Five key categories were identified including future demand; coverage and capacity; policy and regulation; economics and business models; and technology. The results are reported for both fixed and wireless networks. Shared issues affecting the wider digital ecosystem are also identified including Brexit, connecting remote areas and the degree to which the economics of infrastructure allows for building multiple overlapping infrastructures. The authors find that future demand uncertainty is one of the major issues affecting the digital communications sector driven by rigid willingness-to-pay, weak revenue and an increasing shift from fixed to wireless technologies. Policy must create the market conditions that encourage the entry of new competitors with innovative thinking and disruptive business models. Research limitations/implications A limitation of the analysis is that it is quite UK-focussed; hence, further research could broaden this analysis to assessing issues at a continental or global scale. Originality/value The value of this paper originates from the breadth of the expert elicitation exercise carried out to gather the initial set of issues, followed by the analysis of this data by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers. The results direct a future research agenda, as many issues are indicative of a lack of existing evidence to support effective decision-making.

Inflexible Repositioning: Commitment in Competition and Uncertainty

2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (9) ◽  
pp. 4207-4225
Author(s):  
Jiajia Cong ◽  
Wen Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Demand Uncertainty ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
The Other ◽  
Competitive Advantages ◽  
Option Value ◽  
Stochastic Demands ◽  
The Future ◽  
Asymmetric Equilibrium ◽  
Future Demand

We study the value of commitment in a business environment that is both competitive and uncertain, in which two firms face stochastic demands and compete in positioning and repositioning. If the future demand tends to disperse or the demand uncertainty is sufficiently large, one firm chooses rigidity (i.e., commits not to change its positions), and the other chooses flexibility (i.e., to reposition freely). We find that a firm’s rigidity can benefit not only itself, but also its flexible rival. When uncertainty is larger, rigidity becomes more valuable relative to flexibility. These results arise because the asymmetric equilibrium generates two collective gains in addition to the usual individual gain (in terms of competitive advantages) accrued to the committing firm. A firm’s rigid repositioning can soften competition and generate a commitment value, and the other firm’s flexible repositioning generates an option value. Both values then spill over to competitors within the ecosystem. These results suggest that, when firms compete under uncertainty, commitment and options are valuable not only for the party that is making the choice, but also for all competing parties collectively. Commitment value and option value do not have to be mutually exclusive; they can coexist and even strengthen each other through unilateral commitment, which achieves the best of both strategies. This paper was accepted by Juanjuan Zhang, marketing.

scholarly journals Crowdfunding, Efficiency, and Inequality

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 1393-1427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Peter Grüner ◽  
Christoph Siemroth
Keyword(s):  
Capital Flows ◽  
Demand Uncertainty ◽  
Liquidity Constraints ◽  
Aggregate Demand ◽  
Capital Allocation ◽  
Equity Crowdfunding ◽  
Future Demand

Abstract We show how decentralized individual investments can efficiently allocate capital to innovating firms via equity crowdfunding. We develop a model where consumers have privately known consumption preferences and may act as investors. Consumers identify worthwhile investments based on their own preferences and invest in firms whose product they like. In the presence of aggregate demand uncertainty, an efficient capital allocation is achieved if all groups of consumers have enough liquidity to invest. If some groups of consumers cannot invest, capital flows reflect preferences of liquid investors but not future demand. Comparing with traditional financing forms, crowdfunding in the absence of liquidity constraints can be superior unless traditional financiers are fully competitive and perfectly informed.

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