Operations in an Omnichannel World

Santiago  Gallino; Antonio  Moreno

Book | 2019

Operations in an Omnichannel World

by Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno

Abstract

The world of retailing has changed dramatically in the past decade. Sales originating at online channels have been steadily increasing, and even for sales transacted at brick-and-mortar channels, a much larger fraction of sales is affected by online channels in different touch points during the customer journey. Shopper behavior and expectations have been evolving along with the growth of digital channels, challenging retailers to redesign their fulfillment and execution processes, to better serve their customers. This edited book examines the challenges and opportunities arising from the shift towards omnichannel retail. We examine these issues through the lenses of operations management, emphasizing the supply chain transformations associated with fulfilling an omnichannel demand. The book is divided into three parts. In the first part, “Omnichannel business models,” we present four studies that explore how retailers are adjusting their fundamental business models to the new omnichannel landscape. The second part, “Data-driven decisions in an omnichannel world,” includes five chapters that study the evolving data opportunities enabled by omnichannel retail and present specific examples of data-driven analyses. Finally, in the third part, “Case studies in omnichannel retailing,” we include four studies that provide a deep dive into how specific industries, companies, and markets are navigating the omnichannel world. Ultimately, this book introduces the reader to the fundamentals of operations in an omnichannel context and highlights the different innovative research ideas on the topic using a variety of methodologies.

Keywords: omnichannel; omnichannel retail; retail; operations; Operations; Management; Supply Chain Management; Business Model; Organizational Change and Adaptation;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Gallino, Santiago, and Antonio Moreno, eds. Operations in an Omnichannel World. Vol. 8, Springer Series in Supply Chain Management. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019.

We conjecture that for online retailers, experience-centric offline store formats do not simply expand market coverage, but rather, serve to significantly amplify future positive customer behaviors, both online and offline. We term this phenomenon “supercharging” and test our thesis using data from a digital-first men’s apparel retailer and a pioneer of the so-called zero inventory store (ZIS) format—a small-footprint, experience-centric retail location that carries no inventory for immediate fulfillment, but fulfils orders via e-commerce. Using a risk-set matching approach, we calibrate our estimates on customers who are “treated,” that is, have a ZIS experience, and matched with identical customers who shop online only. We find that after the ZIS experience, customers spend more, shop at a higher velocity, and are less likely to return items. The positive impact on returns is doubly virtuous as it is more pronounced for more tactile, higher-priced items, thus mitigating a key pain point of online retail. Furthermore, the ZIS shopping experience aids product discovery and brand attachment, causing sales to become more diffuse over a larger number of categories. Finally, we demonstrate that our results are robust to self-selection and potentially confounding effects of unobservable factors on the matched pairs of customers. Implications for retailing practice, including for legacy, offline-first retailers, are discussed.

Case | HBS Case Collection | August 2020 (Revised August 2020)

Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations (A)

Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in November 2019 as Ozgur Tort and Mustafa Bartin, CEO and chief large-format and online retail officer of Migros Ticaret A.S. (Migros), Turkey’s oldest and one of its largest supermarket chains, are contemplating what the best fulfillment format and delivery model for the company’s growing online arm, Sanal Market, and its under-30-minutes grocery service arm, Hemen, are. Migros’s online operations had grown over 50% year-on-year in the previous three years, and the target for 2020 was to grow 100%. With all of these considerations in mind, Bartin and Tort needed to decide which levers to pull for the last mile and fulfillment to best serve the future of Migros.

The case chronicles the founding and growth of Migros as well as Sanal Market and lays the ground for food and grocery retail in Turkey complete with the competitive outlook. The case then provides a detailed overview of how Migros built online channels, Sanal Market and its recently introduced Hemen, and how Tort and Bartin have thought about fulfillment and delivery as well as omnichannel mentality. The case goes into detail about the three different fulfillment models, store pick micro-fulfillment center, and dark store, that Migros is piloting in 2019 as well as providing an understanding of what the company is thinking about logistics and last mile delivery as its online sales grow.

While globally, online shopping and consumer preferences were changing fast, particularly in terms of how and with what frequency customers shopped online and how fast they wanted their groceries delivered, Migros was trying to find the optimum model for fulfillment and last mile delivery. What was the best way to optimize last mile with regards to pooling store catchment areas and pooling stores, and which of the fulfillment models would yield the best results in terms of picking speed and accuracy and customer expectations? Additionally, the company needed to figure out how to position Hemen; facing fierce competition from fast-delivery grocery startups, for whom burning cash to achieve growth was not a concern, should Hemen remain as a stand-alone offering or should it be integrated within the Sanal Market app?

Keywords: retail; grocery; Business Model; Emerging Markets; For-Profit Firms; Strategy; Technology Platform; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Value Creation; Globalization; Competition; Expansion; Logistics; Profit; Resource Allocation; Corporate Strategy; Turkey;

Citation:

Moreno, Antonio, and Gamze Yucaoglu. "Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations (A)." Harvard Business School Case 621-026, August 2020. (Revised August 2020.) View Details

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The case opens in February 2020 as Ozgur Tort and Mustafa Bartin, CEO and chief large-format and online retail officer of Migros Ticaret A.S. (Migros), Turkey’s oldest and one of its largest supermarket chains, are looking over the results of the fulfillment pilot the company had been running since June 2019. Comparing the data from dark store, micro fulfillment center, and store pick models, the duo see that contrary to the expectations outlined in their business plan in May 2019, the mini dark-store performance metrics were superior to those of the dark store format.
As the online grocery market is evolving, the duo decide to refrain from going forward with one fulfillment model only and decide to mix and match the fulfillment models as needed and buttress the efforts with automation for picking to increase efficiency. On the last mile, the teams decide to focus on pooling and developing an algorithm to automate deployment while trying to combine delivery efforts for both Sanal Market and Hemen. Decisions with regards to Hemen’s offering are yet to be made as its competitors manage to raise money from Silicon Valley.

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Operations in an Omnichannel World

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