On November 30 NES Professor Daria Dzyabura participated in the open online academic seminar focusing on topics related to quantitative marketing, where she presented a research “Leveraging the Power of Images in Managing Product Return Rates” (jointly with Siham El Kihal, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management; John R. Hauser, MIT; Marat Ibragimov, MIT).
The research shows that predicting return rates prior to product launch increases the profit of online channels substantially. The authors demonstrate how machine-learning methods applied to product images enhance predictive ability relative to the retailer’s benchmark, and derive an optimal policy for launch decisions.
Among other speakers of the Virtual Quantitative Marketing Seminar were professors from Yale University, London Business School, Stanford University, Harvard Business School, New York University, Northwestern University, INSEAD, University of Chicago.
Video of the talk is available here.