TECHNOLOGIES FOR DIGITALIZATION OF DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS: THE ATTITUDE OF THE NEW GENERATION OF RUSSIAN BUYERS

At the moment, there is an active introduction of digital technologies into distribution channels. The digitalization of sales channels in Russia has created objective prerequisites for the development of collaboration marketing, the use of which involves the inclusion of channel partners in marketing work, network activity, and the provision of content and assets. In these conditions, it is important to understand the attitude of the most promising category of buyers (youth) to these processes. Therefore, this study is devoted to identifying consumer attitudes towards the introduction of digital technologies into the distribution channels of the Russian Federation. This article assesses the opinion of young Russian consumers regarding the digitalization of distribution channels. The result of the study is to test a number of author's hypotheses regarding the preferences of young Russian consumers in relation to online and offline purchases. According to the results of the conducted field research, it can be concluded that the risk of the disappearance of offline trade remains rather low. The study found that modern consumers are aware of e-commerce services and have high confidence in them, and they often make their purchases through marketplaces. However, despite the increased demand for online shopping, which is due to the coronavirus pandemic, consumers do not allow for a complete crowding out of traditional stores. The respondents are more likely to purchase only pre-selected and seasonal goods, while everyday goods, periodicals and limited-choice goods are still more likely to be purchased by modern consumers in offline stores.

Market Premium and Macroeconomic Factors as Determinants of Industry Premium: Evidence from Emerging Economies

In this study, we examine the equity (industry) premium of seventeen nonfinancial sectors covering sample 306 firms using monthly data from January 2002 to December 2018. Two-stage least square (2SLS) method is applied to estimate the macro-based multifactor model. It is found that the market premium and the interest rate factors are significantly affecting the industry equity premium of all the nonfinancial sectors. However, there exists a positive effect of other macroeconomic variables such as money supply, foreign direct investment, and industrial production which is different for the different sectors based on its nature of product and services they offered. The industries based on their product development which are linked to particular macroeconomic variables have more effect than others such as increase in money supply which cannot increase the sale of pharmaceutical products until needed. Similarly, an interesting insight reveals that industries producing seasonal goods, e.g., food producing, are not very much affected by macroeconomic variables but the change in seasons and similar results also revealed for tobacco industry.

Inventory Integration with Rational Consumers

Retailers have increasingly pursued initiatives to combine inventory located throughout their enterprise into a single stock from which customers anywhere in their distribution network may purchase. Also known as inventory pooling, this practice is well known to generate operational value by reducing inventory requirements and stock-outs. In “Inventory Integration with Rational Consumers,” Aflaki and Swinney examine a different consequence of pooling: how it influences customer purchasing behavior. They show that integration can lead to behavioral consequences resulting from changing customer purchasing incentives, especially for seasonal goods that are sold in end-of-season clearance sales. These behavioral effects can be negative, and can even outweigh the operational benefits of pooling, if pooling leads to an increase in clearance sale inventory availability that encourages more customers to wait for discounts before buying. Specific conditions that lead to negative (or positive) behavioral value of integration are discussed. Overall, the results illustrate that the ways customers react to inventory pooling can be just as important as its operational consequences.

Dynamic Inventory Allocation for Seasonal Merchandise at Dillard’s

We consider how to allocate inventory of seasonal goods in a two-echelon distribution network for Dillard’s Inc., a large department store chain in the United States. Our objective is to allocate products with limited inventory from a distribution center to multiple retail stores over the selling season to maximize total sales revenue. Under the assumption that the true demand distributions are available to the retailer, we develop an effective dynamic inventory allocation heuristic. We further consider a more realistic and challenging setting for seasonal goods, where demand distributions are unknown to the retailer, and propose two “learning-while-doing” extensions of our inventory allocation heuristic; these policies update demand distribution estimates in a rolling horizon using censored point-of-sales data. We evaluate the performance of the policies using simulation on Dillard’s historical sales data. Dillard’s Inc. has incorporated the proposed policy into their current replenishment methodology and has been using the policy to set order levels for its seasonal merchandise.