Time to shift the shift: performance effects of within-day cumulative service encounters in retail stores

This paper investigates the impact of cumulative service encounters (CSE) on sales staff's performance in retailing services. To assess the overall impact of CSE on store performance, we present an integrative framework that jointly considers two key performance indicators of retail stores (con...

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Main Authors: Chen, Chien-Ming, Chuang, Howard Hao-Chun
Other Authors: Nanyang Business School
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/172451
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1724512023-12-11T02:51:01Z Time to shift the shift: performance effects of within-day cumulative service encounters in retail stores Chen, Chien-Ming Chuang, Howard Hao-Chun Nanyang Business School Business::Operations management Retailing Data Analytics This paper investigates the impact of cumulative service encounters (CSE) on sales staff's performance in retailing services. To assess the overall impact of CSE on store performance, we present an integrative framework that jointly considers two key performance indicators of retail stores (conversions and sales). We hypothesize that staff performance is negatively affected by within-day CSE, lowering both conversions and sales. Using a long panel dataset from 191 apparel stores over six calendar years (with more than 2 million store-hour observations), we empirically test the proposed framework at the granular hourly level. We find that within-day CSE have a negative and significant effect on how sales staff influences conversions and sales. We estimate that CSE are associated with an average of $9,991 revenue loss per day for the retail chain in our sample. To further illustrate how the empirical results can inform staff scheduling decisions, we present an optimization model of within-day workforce allocation. The model shows that a store could improve its sales by 2% when the store optimizes its staff schedule to offset the effect of CSE, without the requirement for increasing the staffing level. To our knowledge, this is the first study that empirically examines the negative effect of CSE on retail sales staff's productivity. Our findings contribute to both retail operations practices and the literature on workload-dependent service systems. 2023-12-11T02:51:01Z 2023-12-11T02:51:01Z 2023 Journal Article Chen, C. & Chuang, H. H. (2023). Time to shift the shift: performance effects of within-day cumulative service encounters in retail stores. Omega, 119, 102892-. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.omega.2023.102892 0305-0483 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/172451 10.1016/j.omega.2023.102892 2-s2.0-85159635648 119 102892 en Omega © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Business::Operations management
Retailing
Data Analytics
spellingShingle Business::Operations management
Retailing
Data Analytics
Chen, Chien-Ming
Chuang, Howard Hao-Chun
Time to shift the shift: performance effects of within-day cumulative service encounters in retail stores
description This paper investigates the impact of cumulative service encounters (CSE) on sales staff's performance in retailing services. To assess the overall impact of CSE on store performance, we present an integrative framework that jointly considers two key performance indicators of retail stores (conversions and sales). We hypothesize that staff performance is negatively affected by within-day CSE, lowering both conversions and sales. Using a long panel dataset from 191 apparel stores over six calendar years (with more than 2 million store-hour observations), we empirically test the proposed framework at the granular hourly level. We find that within-day CSE have a negative and significant effect on how sales staff influences conversions and sales. We estimate that CSE are associated with an average of $9,991 revenue loss per day for the retail chain in our sample. To further illustrate how the empirical results can inform staff scheduling decisions, we present an optimization model of within-day workforce allocation. The model shows that a store could improve its sales by 2% when the store optimizes its staff schedule to offset the effect of CSE, without the requirement for increasing the staffing level. To our knowledge, this is the first study that empirically examines the negative effect of CSE on retail sales staff's productivity. Our findings contribute to both retail operations practices and the literature on workload-dependent service systems.
author2 Nanyang Business School
author_facet Nanyang Business School
Chen, Chien-Ming
Chuang, Howard Hao-Chun
format Article
author Chen, Chien-Ming
Chuang, Howard Hao-Chun
author_sort Chen, Chien-Ming
title Time to shift the shift: performance effects of within-day cumulative service encounters in retail stores
title_short Time to shift the shift: performance effects of within-day cumulative service encounters in retail stores
title_full Time to shift the shift: performance effects of within-day cumulative service encounters in retail stores
title_fullStr Time to shift the shift: performance effects of within-day cumulative service encounters in retail stores
title_full_unstemmed Time to shift the shift: performance effects of within-day cumulative service encounters in retail stores
title_sort time to shift the shift: performance effects of within-day cumulative service encounters in retail stores
publishDate 2023
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/172451
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