Overview

One major theme of Professor Moreno’s research has been retail channel integration and so-called “omnichannel retail.” In omnichannel retail, retailers provide their customers with a shopping experience that may involve different channels in a way that aims to be seamless. For example, many large retailers today allow customers to reserve products online and pick them up at the store where they are stocked, return products purchased online at physical stores, or buy products online and have them shipped to a store to pick up when convenient. In order to offer these functionalities, retailers need to integrate their channels. This is recognized currently by practitioners as one of the most important changes in retail, one that dramatically affects retailers’ operations – especially existing inventory models. Professor Moreno’s multidisciplinary work in this area – combining approaches from marketing, operations, and information systems – has helped bring such practically relevant issues to the attention of the operations management community. In another stream of research, Professor Moreno has sought to understand the operational implications of novel features of (increasingly important) business models based on platforms, such as the fact that services often are provided by independent contractors who make decisions in response to available information and incentives, or the fact that many of these service providers are nonprofessionals. He has also empirically studied fundamental questions in operations strategy, such as how pricing and production flexibility interact. Finally, he has done work in the area of retail and supply chain analytics, developing models that can help firms make better decisions such as improving forecasts or inventory replenishment decisions.