Rafael Becerril Arreola

Considers the potential for reducing plastic waste by examining the efficiency with which different polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles deliver beverages. Finds that 80% of the variation in bottle weight is explained by bottle capacity, 16% by product category, and 1% by brand.

Studies the effects of changes in the United States income distribution on assortment size in the mainstream grocery channel. Discusses how census demographics for 1,711 counties are matched to local assortment data from Nielsen in 944 grocery product categories from 2007 to 2013. Shows that holding other demographics constant, assortment size increases with higher average income but decreases with greater income dispersion.

Provides the first systematic study on the ethics of blockchain, mapping its main socio-technical challenges in technology and applications; second, to identify ethical issues of blockchain; third, to propose a conceptual framework of blockchain ethics study; fourth, to discuss ethical issues for stakeholders.

Tests the link between a major recall (by Toyota) in the automobile context and competitors’ promotional responses and (2) assess the effectiveness of promotional responses and how it varies across brand tiers. Finds that though Toyota recalls induced competitive promotions of approximately $850 on average, the competitive promotional reactions did not significantly affect sales on average.

Proposes an empirical approach that includes a choice model to abstract rich demand patterns and an estimation algorithm that addresses the endogeneity and collinearity of KVI prices. Illustrates how an empirical application based on vehicle choice datas approach can be implemented in practice and demonstrates the importance of modeling spillovers while yielding interesting managerial implications.

Examines the effects of emphases on two aspects of service satisfaction, relational service (interactions with the service provider's staff) and service environment (service provider's facilities), on the market shares of service and goods components of partnered hybrid offerings. Uses multiple secondary data sources from the U.S. automobile industry between 2009 and 2015, the authors find that emphasizing relational service satisfaction increases service market share but decreases goods market share

Considers a two-stage decision problem, in which an online retailer first makes optimal decisions on his profit margin and free-shipping threshold, and then determines his inventory level. Starts by developing the retailer’s expected profit function. Makes use of publicly-available statistics to find the best-fitting distribution for consumers’ purchase amounts and the best-fitting function for conversion rate (i.e., probability that an arriving visitor places an online order with the retailer).

Considers an online retailer's joint pricing and contingent free-shipping (CFS) decisions in both monopoly and duopoly structures, which is an important marketing-operations interface problem. Begins by investigating the impacts of a retailer's decisions on consumers' purchase behaviors, and shows that the CFS strategy is useful to acquire the consumers with large order sizes. Computes the probability of repeated purchases, and construct an expected profit function for an online retailer in the monopolistic setting. 

Attempts to dissipate the ambiguity that Warren (2004) associates to feedback and its effects. Describes the main differences between models with and without feedback, illustrating the types of behaviours that each of them can describe providing a definition of feedback that differs from that assumed in Warren (2004).