CAREER: Enhancing E-Commerce and Service Systems by Embracing Consumer Flexibility

职业：通过拥抱消费者灵活性来增强电子商务和服务系统

• 批准号: 1944428
• 负责人: Adam Elmachtoub
• 金额: $ 59.49万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1944428&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Enhancing; Commerce; Service; Systems; CAREER; Enhancing; Commerce; Service; Systems

This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant will contribute to the advancement of national prosperity and economic welfare by designing more efficient e-commerce and service systems that embrace and leverage consumer flexibility. Consumer flexibility refers to a consumer's explicit willingness to receive one of an assortment of offered options in exchange for a reward or discount. Two examples in the retail and service sectors include (i) opaque products in online retail and travel, where consumers are willing to purchase an article of clothing of unknown color or travel to an unspecified destination, and (ii) large time windows in scheduled services such as grocery delivery and medical appointments, where consumers are willing to receive service in one of multiple time slots. The research fundamentally benefits consumers and firms by providing discounted flexible options to consumers while reducing operational costs of selling products and services. This award supports research on foundational tools for understanding, embedding, and embracing consumer flexibility in e-commerce and service systems, focusing on both the demand and supply perspectives. The plan to integrate research and education includes further developing the NYC Operations Day conference to embrace doctoral students via presentation opportunities, mentorship, and funding from this project, as well as course enrichment and the mentoring and education of undergraduate and doctoral students.In order to fully embrace consumer flexibility, researchers and practitioners require a new set of tools for managing demand with flexible options and for converting consumer flexibility into operational efficiency. From the demand perspective, this project provides a computationally tractable framework for incorporating consumer flexibility. Since the valuations for flexible options are correlated with the traditional options with special structure, previous models and algorithms in this domain do not apply. This research will develop new analytical methods and tractable approximation approaches for modeling consumer behavior in choice models, leading to new pricing analysis and tools that address the inherent mathematical difficulties introduced by flexible options. From the supply perspective, classical operational models will be extended to incorporate consumer flexibility. In inventory management, this project will develop algorithms that quantify and leverage consumer flexibility to better balance inventory and reduce supply chain costs. For scheduled services, such as grocery delivery, new models will be developed to guide the design of time windows that effectively manage capacity and ensure efficient vehicle routes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这项教师的早期职业发展计划（职业）赠款将通过设计更有效的电子商务和服务系统来促​​进国家繁荣和经济福利的发展，以提供和利用消费者的灵活性。 消费者的灵活性是指消费者明确愿意获得各种各样的选项之一，以换取奖励或折扣。零售和服务部门的两个例子包括（i）在线零售和旅行中的不透明产品，消费者愿意购买一份未知颜色的衣服或前往未指定的目的地的服装，以及（ii）在杂货店交付和医疗预约等预定服务中的大型时间窗口，消费者愿意在多个时间段内接收服务。研究从根本上为消费者和公司提供了折扣灵活的选择，从而使消费者降低了销售产品和服务的运营成本，从而使消费者和公司受益。该奖项支持对理解，嵌入和拥抱电子商务和服务系统中消费者灵活性的基础工具的研究，重点是需求和供应观点。整合研究和教育的计划包括进一步开发纽约市运营日会议，以通过演示机会，指导和资金从该项目中掌握博士生，以及课程丰富以及对本科和博士生的指导和教育。在命令中，以使消费者的灵活性，研究人员和实践者完全拥抱消费者，需要使用灵活性的工具，以使消费者的灵活性，研究人员和实践者需要使用灵活性来稳定效率。从需求的角度来看，该项目提供了一个可融合消费者灵活性的计算障碍框架。 由于灵活选项的估值与具有特殊结构的传统选项相关，因此该域中的先前模型和算法不适用。这项研究将开发新的分析方法和可进行的典型近似方法，以建模选择模型中的消费者行为，从而导致新的定价分析和工具，以解决灵活选项引入的固有数学困难。从供应的角度来看，将扩展经典的运营模型以纳入消费者的灵活性。在库存管理中，该项目将开发量化算法，以量化和利用消费者的灵活性，以更好地平衡库存并降低供应链成本。对于诸如杂货交付之类的预定服务，将开发新的模型，以指导有效管理容量并确保有效车辆路线的时间窗口的设计。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子的评估来支持的，并具有更广泛的影响。