时间Time: 2025年12月8日 Dec 8, 2025 （北京时间） 21:30 - 23:45

地点Venue: 线上会议（Zoom）

会议链接Zoom Link: https://tennessee.zoom.us/j/81128958841

会议密码Password: 666666

【讲座一】Increasing the Social Impact of Academic Research in Business and Management

主讲人Speaker: Jinhong Xie, University of Florida

时间Time: December 8（12月8日）, 8:30AM-9:15AM EST（21:30 - 22:15 Beijing北京时间）

摘要Abstract: It has become increasingly important for academic research to produce not only scholarly contributions but also meaningful social impact. This presentation highlights several recent research projects to demonstrate how adopting a broader perspective within traditional business research can create new opportunities for scholars to enhance the societal value and practical influence of their work.

【讲座二】Algorithmic Assortment Curation: An Empirical Study of Buybox in Online Marketplaces

主讲人Speaker: Santiago Gallino, University of Pennsylvania

时间Time: December 8（12月8日）, 9:15AM-10AM EST （22:15- 23:00 Beijing北京时间）

摘要Abstract: Online marketplaces have revolutionized the way global sales take place, providing a platform for millions of buyers and sellers to connect. While the presence of numerous third-party sellers attracts customers to the platform, it also leads to a proliferation of listings for each product, making it challenging for customers to choose between the available options. To tackle this, online marketplaces utilize algorithmic tools to curate the presentation of different listings of a product to customers. This paper focuses on the Buybox, an algorithmic tool that chooses and presents prominently one option as the default one to customers.

We assess the Buybox's influence on marketplace dynamics by examining its staggered introduction within a major product category in a leading online marketplace. Our results demonstrate that Buybox's implementation mitigates frictions for both customers and sellers and leads to a significant increase in marketplace orders . On the customer side, we observe a decrease in search frictions, as evidenced by increased conversion rates and a more pronounced Buybox effect on the mobile channel, which inherently has higher search frictions compared to the desktop. On the seller side, the number of sellers offering a product increases after Buybox's introduction which suggest a decrease in frictions for the sellers.

Our analysis reveals that customers obtain lower prices and higher average quality levels when competition for Buybox is intense. We also find that the marketplace becomes more concentrated following Buybox's introduction, representing an unintended consequence that platforms and vendors should manage. Our study contributes to the growing literature on algorithms in platforms by examining how algorithmic curation affects marketplace participants and overall marketplace dynamics.

【讲座三】Fluid Model for Service Systems with dependence: Model relationships and equilibrium points  

（Based on joint work with Ohad Perry, Deniz Simsek and Allen Wu）

主讲人Speaker: Achal Bassamboo, Northwestern University,

时间Time: December 8（12月8日）, 10AM-10:45AM EST （23:00 - 23:45 Beijing北京时间）

摘要Abstract: We consider large service systems in which a customer's service time depends on the delay they experienced in the queue. We consider two different dependence mechanisms: In the first, an arriving customer's service time and individual patience time are dependent, we refer to this model as the exogenous dependence. In the second mechanism, service requirement of a customer may evolve while waiting in queue, hence customers' service times depend on the delay experienced in the queue, which we refer as the endogenous dependence.  

The exact analysis of the stochastic system is intractable; we propose a fluid model, based on many-server considerations, to approximate the queueing mean dynamics and its stationary behavior. Interestingly, we establish a unified relationship between these two models, enabling a cohesive study. We characterize sufficient conditions for the existence of a unique stationary point for the fluid model with stationary arrivals and show that they always hold under exogenous dependence. When the dependence is endogenous, we show that the fluid model may possess multiple equilibria, each of which is either locally stable or unstable. This implies that the stochastic system may experience large oscillations, that are an order of magnitude larger than “typical” stochastic fluctuations, as well as congestion collapse.  

Further, we provide a partial ranking on the dependence structures implying an ordering of the fluid trajectories which facilitates analyzing the systems' performance. Finally, we study how the fluid converges to stationarity, and employ simulation to demonstrate the effectiveness of our fluid analysis, as well as its implications for the stochastic system. Under exogenous dependence, the fluid model might oscillate towards or monotonically converge to the stationary point depending on the nature of the dependence, suggesting caution for the steady-state analysis for a system with time-varying arrivals.

主讲人简介Bios:

Jinhong Xie, University of Florida

Professor Xie is Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida. She is a distinguished marketing scholar with a long and influential academic career. She served as JC Penney Eminent Scholar Chair and Professor of Marketing at the Warrington College of Business, University of Florida. She holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University (China), an M.S. in Optimal Control from the Second Academy of the Ministry of Astronautics (China), and both an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Engineering & Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University. Professor Xie’s primary research interests include innovation management and strategy, network effects, service and product pricing, marketing strategy, and the impact of national culture on new product management. Her scholarly contributions include influential work on "probabilistic goods" and "probabilistic selling", a framework she developed showing how firms can offer randomized bundles of goods to manage demand uncertainty and improve profitability. She also explored online consumer reviews and word-of-mouth effects in digital/social-networked markets, contributing to our understanding of how social interaction and information (im)perfection shape consumer behavior and product success. Over her career, her research has been published in leading journals including Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of Product Innovation Management — among others.

Santiago Gallino, University of Pennsylvania

Santiago Gallino is the Charles W. Evans Distinguished Faculty Scholar, Associate Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions, and Associate Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Professor Gallino studies both digital transformation and store execution issues in retail. He has researched with and consulted for numerous organizations. His research has won multiple awards and has appeared in journals such as Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Operations Research, Journal of Marketing, Sloan Management Review, and Harvard Business Review. His research has been covered frequently by several media outlets. Before joining Wharton, Professor Gallino worked at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He holds a PhD in Operations and Information Management and a Master’s in Statistics from the University of Pennsylvania where he was a Fulbright Scholar, an MBA from IAE Business School, and a degree in Electrical Engineering from Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Achal Bassamboo, Northwestern University

Achal Bassamboo is the Charles E. Morrison Professor at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He is also the co-director of the MMM program which is a dual degree program between Kellogg and Segal Design at McCormick School, and Chair of the Operations Department. Professor Bassamboo joined the faculty at the Kellogg School of Management in 2005, after completing his Ph.D. in Operations, Information and Technology at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His research interests lie in the areas of service systems, revenue management and information sharing. His current research involves designing flexible service systems with a focus on capacity planning and effects of parameter uncertainty. He is also studying credibility (or lack thereof) of information provided by a service provider or a retailer to its customers.

His articles have appeared in leading journals, including Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, and Operations Research. Professor Bassamboo was awarded the 2016 "Young Scholar Award" given by the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society for his research. He has served on the editorial boards for Management Science, POMS and Naval Research Logistics. Professor Bassamboo teaches courses on operations management, supply chain logistics, decision models and statistics.