2025年第37期(总第1078期)
演讲主题：Online Retailing with Instant Return Credit
主讲人：石铎 香港中文大学（深圳）助理教授
主持人：关旭 供应链管理与系统工程系教授
活动时间：2025年6月6日（周五）10:30-12:00
活动地点：管院大楼121室
主讲人简介：
石铎，香港中文大学（深圳）经管学院助理教授。他于2018年取得圣路易斯华盛顿大学奥林商学院运营与制造业管理博士学位。此前，他毕业于中国科学技术大学华罗庚班，期间于中国科学院数学与系统科学研究院访问一年。石铎用解析模型处理企业与政府部门的运营问题。他的近期研究囊括工业4.0下的运营策略、企业社会责任、农业与食品供应链、零售运营以及内容运营等主题。石铎的研究成果发表于《Management Science》，《Manufacturing & Service Operations Management》，以及《Production and Operations Management》，他也担任这些期刊的审稿人，同时是POM编委会成员。石铎主持国家自然科学基金项目，曾获颁多个学术会议最佳论文奖以及香港中文大学（深圳）校长杰出教学奖、经管学院科研奖。
活动简介：
Many online retailers now provide instant return credit (IRC), which instantly offers store credit upon return without verification. While IRC expands consumers' shopping budgets, addresses product-taste mismatches, and drives new sales, it also encourages fake returns. In this paper, we study IRC's fundamental dynamics and implications. Using a game theory model, we examine a retailer selling two horizontally differentiated products to consumers with diverse tastes, budgets, and honesty levels. Market risk depends on product cost, consumers' salvage value for mismatched products, and the proportion of dishonest consumers.In the base scenario with uniform IRC, we propose three strategies: offer partial IRC with symmetric pricing in low-risk markets; provide full IRC with asymmetric pricing in medium-risk markets; avoid IRC in high-risk markets. In the advanced scenario where consumer types can be distinguished, retailers should offer full (partial or no) IRC to honest (dishonest) consumers and may tolerate some fake returns.Our results show that uniform IRC benefits low-risk markets, while contingent IRC performs better in medium-risk ones. Moreover, uniform IRC may disadvantage both consumer types for low-cost products, whereas contingent IRC rewards honesty and punishes dishonesty.
