【主题】 Why are the banks still opening branches? The impact of virtual channel on physical channel capacity expansion 【时间】2010-3-2410:30-12:00
【地点】ROOM 453, Weilun Building, SEM
【语言】英文
【内容摘要】
Multi-channel service systems that combine both physical and virtual (e.g., online or phone) service locations as well as employee-based full service and customer self-service have evolved in most service industries. Of special interest is increasing role of virtual self-service options such as online banking, online retail or web-based customer self-support, which was essentially non-existent before the Internet was available for commercial activity. One of the explanations for the investment in virtual self-service was to shift customers from high cost and sometimes inconvenient physical channels to virtual channels, which would enable firms to reduce capacity or slow expansion of physical channels. However, in some prominent service industries, the opposite has been observed. For instance, the Federal Reserve economists have noted that the number of commercial bank branches in the US has risen 39% from 1998 to 2006. In this paper we present a spatial competition model that relates customer use of virtual channels to the optimal capacity of physical channels. Our results suggest that the combination of competitive effects and the fact that customers can use virtual channels as alternatives for the physical channels to fulfill some of their service demands leads to a situation where increased use of virtual channels is linked to the increases in both the number of physical channel locations as well as the probability of locating a physical channel in a new market. The predictions of our model are then tested using data on retail bank locations and found to hold in the US market.
【主讲人简介】
Dr. Mei Xue is an Associate Professor of Operations Management at the Carroll School of Management, Boston College. She is a Research Fellow of the Wharton Financial Institutions Center and a WeBI Fellow of the Wharton E-business Initiative, both at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, a Faculty Fellow of the Service Leadership Center at Arizona State University, a Research Fellow at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (China) and an Adjunct Research Scholar at Columbia Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. Dr. Xue received her Ph.D. in Management Science and Applied Economics from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Xue抯 research interests include service co-production and Customer Efficiency Management (CEM), service delivery in multi-channel delivery systems, process design and contracting of knowledge-intensive services (e.g. consulting), and productivity and efficiency analysis of service industries including banking, consulting, retail and healthcare. Professor Xue served as the principle investigator of a research project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF): 揅ustomer Efficiency and the Management of Multi-channel Service Delivery System� that investigated service management in financial service industries from 2005 to 2008. The project involved several U.S. banks including one of the top-five retail banks worldwide. She currently serves on the editorial review board of Production and Operations Management (POM) and a guest co-editor for its upcoming special issue on 揟he Theory and Practice of Operations Management in China�.
|
