Aditya Balaram, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Information Systems and Business Analytics, College of Business Administration Loyola Marymount University
- Los Angeles CA
Biography
Aditya joined the Department of Information Systems & Business Analytics in the fall of 2023. He earned his Ph.D. in management science from the University of South Carolina. Prior to that, he earned master's degrees in statistics & operations research from UNC Chapel Hill and in applicable mathematics from the London School of Economics, as well as a BSc from St. Joseph's College, Bangalore.
His research focuses on retail and sustainable operations. By using game theoretic and econometric tools, his work aims to better understand how various operational decisions can impact the environment. He also studies how different return policies can impact retailers' profits. His work has been published in Naval Research Logistics and Sustainability. He has served as a reviewer for journals such as Production and Operations Management and Journal of Operations Management. He has presented his work at various conferences such as the INFORMS Annual Meeting and the Annual POMS Conference.
Aditya teaches Operations & Supply Chain Management Analytics at LMU. Prior to joining LMU, he taught courses on business statistics and calculus at the University of South Carolina and UNC Chapel Hill.
Education
University of South Carolina
Ph.D.
Management Science
2023
UNC-Chapel Hill
M.S.
Statistics and Operations Research
2017
London School of Economics and Political Science
M.S.
Applicable Mathematics
2015
St. Joseph's College, Bangalore
B.S.
Economics, Mathematics, Statistics
2014
Social
Areas of Expertise
Articles
Bracketing of Purchases to Manage Size Uncertainty: Should Online Retailers be Worried?
Naval Research Logistics2022-01-22
For online apparel retailers, sizing has proven to be a particularly thorny challenge—no matter how much information is provided online, it is often impossible for an online shopper to determine exactly which size of an apparel item will fit her best. Given the increasing ubiquity of free returns (full refund, no return shipping charge), consumers often manage this size uncertainty by bracketing their online apparel purchases, that is, ordering two additional sizes (one smaller, one larger) with the intention of keeping the one that fits best and returning the others. Since bracketing is a relatively new phenomenon in retailing, its net effect on retailer profits is not well-understood. From a retailer's perspective, bracketing is detrimental since it leads to an increase in consumer returns and the associated costs, which can be quite substantial. On the other hand, bracketing can also be beneficial to the retailer by alleviating consumers' concerns about size, and driving higher net sales. In this paper, we establish how price can be used as a lever to influence consumer bracketing behavior, and examine the impact of bracketing on the profits of a monopolist retailer who offers free returns.
