Minha Hwang's Research


1. Publications

Marketing Science, Operation Research, Information Systems Publication: Refereed Journals and Book Chapter

Production and Operations Management, Vol. 30, No. 1, January 2021


McKinsey Quarterly, Oct, 2019


Management Science, Vol. 62, No.3, May, 2015 


Big Data and the Future of Retail Research
Handbook on Economics of Retailing and Distribution, Jan, 2016, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited 


Marketing Science, Vol. 29, No. 5, pp 858-879, September, 2010


 Channel Capabilities, Product Characteristics, and Impacts of Mobile Channel Introduction
Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol. 30, No.2, pp 101 - 125,, 2013


2. Work-In-Progress

Retailer Quality and Branding of Multi-Tiered Store Brand

This project investigates the optimal brand architecture of multi-tiered store brands as a function of perceived retailer quality. Using descriptive regression analyses and controlled lab experiments, we find that the perception of retailer quality influences the perception and choice of private label brands. While in a high-end retailer with endorsed banner brand architecture, consumers are more likely to purchase a value store brand rather than a premium store brand, in a low-end retailer with endorsed banner brand architecture, the opposite is true. In addition, we find that perceptions of retailer quality interact with private label brand architecture to influence choice. For standard and value store brands in the case of high-end and medium-end retailers, banner endorsed brand architecture results in the greatest overall choice of private label choices, followed by endorsed group brand architecture, and stand-alone brand architecture. This is not the case for low-end retailers where we find that consumers’ private label choices are not affected by private label brand architecture. We discuss the implications of our findings for academics and retailer managers. 
Multi-Tiered Store Brand: The Profit Impact of Premium and Economy Store Brands 

 In this paper, we investigate the profit and pricing impact of multi-tiered store brand expansion. Multi-tiered store brand architecture is widely adopted by U.S. supermarkets, and typically characterized by a line of multiple store brands with distinctively different price and quality levels within a category. Retailers expand their store brand products by adding premium and value store brands on top of existing standard store brands. However, not much is known about the profit impacts of premium and value store brand introduction, partially due to limited data. In this paper, we assess the profit impacts of premium and value store brand introductions by utilizing a unique dataset which covers the introduction of both premium and value store brands in a peanut butter category by a regional supermarket chain in the state of California. To achieve this goal, we augment observed data with theory-based assumptions on pricing conducts, inferring the impact on retailer profit through counterfactual simulations. We find that a retailer introducing premium and value store brands gains 0.5% and 1.3% in weekly variable profits, respectively. These gains are mostly attributed to “category expansion” effects with limited cannibalization. We also find that changes in retail margins from the premium store brand introduction were very small. In contrast, both counterfactual simulation and observed data indicate that by introducing value store brands, the retailer increases profitability of standard store brands by increasing prices of standard store brands. Despite this finding, we also note that the observed price increases of standard store brands are beyond the level predicted by counterfactual simulations, which requires further investigation. Taken together, our results show that a retailer introducing premium or value store brands benefits most from an increased ability to penetrate a wider consumer base. This is quite different from the effect of standard store brand entry, for which the profit impact is mostly due to higher retail margins.   


The Drivers of M-commerce Adoption of E-commerce Consumers

In this paper, we investigates how consumers’ e-commerce search and purchase behaviors influence their m-commerce adoption based on a large dataset from a major Korean e-marketplace. We find that e-commerce users who have a greater need for ubiquitous shopping are more likely to adopt m-commerce. Specifically, those who shop more frequently and irregularly are more likely to adopt m-commerce. Second, e-commerce users with shopping patterns incurring higher search costs are less likely to adopt m-commerce. Those who tend to purchase multi-items or multi-categories at a time, and those who tend to search for products across multiple pages are less likely to adopt m-commerce, while those who tend to click on display ads rather than search with keywords or browse categories to purchase products are more likely to adopt m-commerce. Third, e-commerce users who are more risk-averse for transactions are less likely to adopt m-commerce.

3. Minha Hwang's SlideShare Site

Minha Hwang's SlideShare Site

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