My research explores ways to enhance the environmental and social outcomes of online retail logistics, focusing on
strategies that drive change through influencing consumer behavior.
My dissertation investigates three innovative e-commerce logistics strategies that have the potential to enhance sustainability: green-but-slow shipping, in-store pickup, and scheduled neighborhood delivery. Through a combination of lab experiments, field experiments, and econometric analysis, I examine consumer responses to these options, uncover the psychological drivers behind their decisions, and develop strategies to encourage more sustainable behavior.
My research offers tangible real-world impact informed by industry collaboration, and has been recognized with several awards, including the Dare to Care Scholarship from Responsible Research in Business and Management (RRBM) and the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the University of Minnesota.
My job market paper examines the emerging practice of ‘green-but-slow shipping.’ While retailers aim to provide fast fulfillment to stay competitive, this often results in higher greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to energy-intensive transportation modes and more frequent, less consolidated, last-mile deliveries. Green-but-slow shipping alleviates this tension by encouraging customers to voluntarily opt for a slower delivery option with a reduced environmental impact. We focus on two logistical contexts involving a different process change opportunity that supports green-but-slow shipping: shipping mode and order consolidation. Each context involves distinct customer experiences, leading us to explore the following research question: What type of information strategy effectively nudges customers to choose green-but-slow shipping in a given logistics context, and why?
Drawing on behavioral research and industry practices, we develop a theory for how customers perceive information surrounding shipping options. We then identify and test the effect of a comprehensive set of information strategies (i.e., Process, Green Label, Green Process, and Green Outcome) and financial incentives through a series of controlled experiments involving 3,800 participants. A key aspect of the experiments is the incentive compatibility of delivery choices, ensuring that study participants actually received items through the chosen shipping option. The results provide clear guidelines for retailers, indicating that different logistical contexts require distinct nudging strategies, depending on how various types of information influence customer perceptions related to key delivery stakeholders, including the self, society, and the retailer.
This project explores how a novel grocery delivery service leveraging a fixed schedule can improve social welfare, with a focus on food security. While online grocery delivery services have recently surfaced as a potential solution to the food security issue by increasing food access, the high shipping fees and markup pricing of typical ‘on-demand’ services (e.g., Instacart) pose a financial burden on low-income customers and potential funding agencies. In light of this, we explore whether a novel grocery delivery service, called ‘scheduled neighborhood delivery,’ can serve as a better alternative. In this service, the platform accepts orders within a fixed order window and consolidates picking and deliveries for each neighborhood into batches, following a predetermined weekly schedule. We are partnering with a startup grocery delivery platform that employs this service to explore the research question: How can scheduled neighborhood delivery better support food security?
We investigate both the operational and behavioral benefits of this service using various methods. From an operational standpoint, picking and delivery consolidation can increase operational efficiency and reduce logistics costs, facilitating stable, affordable food access. We quantify these cost benefits by comparing the fulfillment labor hours required for scheduled neighborhood and on-demand deliveries, using data from the MOST work measurement system. The results indicate that scheduled neighborhood delivery may reduce labor by 51.9% in the base model. From a behavioral perspective, the longer lead time between order and delivery may encourage customers to plan their groceries more thoughtfully, potentially leading to healthier food consumption. We examine the basket composition through a lab experiment and analysis of our partner’s order transaction data. Findings suggest that scheduled neighborhood delivery service has the potential to increase both healthy food purchase and basket size for major (planned) grocery shopping trips. We are currently designing a follow-up experiment to further explore the behaviors of low-income customers (e.g., SNAP participants), and planning a field experiment with our partner to implement strategies that promote grocery planning aimed at nudging healthier food choices.
We explore in-store pickup, a common omnichannel retail strategy that provides customers with an alternative fulfillment channel to home delivery. Opting for in-store pickup can help retailers reduce logistics costs and lower GHG emissions, particularly when the emission savings from reduced home deliveries exceed the environmental impact of customer travel for pickups. We are partnering with a Canadian online grocery retailer to explore this potential opportunity, addressing the research question: How can customers be nudged to choose in-store pickup when it offers a better environmental outcome than home delivery?
We begin by analyzing the retailer’s transaction data from 24,278 customer orders to understand the differences between in-store pickup and home delivery orders, and to identify the geographic areas where switching to in-store pickup can lower emissions. This analysis allows us to pinpoint target customers for our field experiment. Next, we quantify the potential savings in terms of CO2emissions, retailer logistics cost, and customer delivery costs. Insights from this analysis are used to develop information strategies that highlight the distinct benefits of in-store pickup, including convenience, lower delivery cost, and environmental advantages. We are currently designing a lab experiment to test candidate information strategies and uncover the underlying psychological mechanisms driving logistics decisions in this context. The results from the experiment will guide us in selecting the most promising strategies for testing in a field experiment on the retailer’s platform.
Lee, Y., Choi, S., & Field, J. M. (2020) Development and Validation of the Pick-Up Service Quality Scale of the Buy-Online-Pick-Up-In-Store Service. Operations Management Research, 13(3), 218-232.
Kim, S., Park, G., Lee, Y., & Choi, S. (2016) Customer Emotions and Their Triggers in Luxury Retail: Understanding the Effects of Customer Emotions Before and After Entering a Luxury Shop. Journal of Business Research, 69(12), 5809- 5818.
Kim, S., Choi, S., Park, G., & Lee, Y. (2021) Configurations of Cognitive and Affective Responses Forming Customer Attitudes toward a Luxury Brand. Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science, 31(4), 598-613.
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