OMID KAMRAN-DISFANI* PhD Candidate in Marketing, University of Missouri-Columbia

Transcription

1 OMID KAMRAN-DISFANI* PhD Candidate in Marketing, University of Missouri-Columbia Cell Phone: (859) EDUCATION Ph.D., Marketing, University of Missouri-Columbia (Expected: summer 2018) Graduate Certificate in Applied Statistics, University of Kentucky, 2013 Master of Arts, Advertising and Marketing, University of Leeds (United Kingdom), 2005 Bachelor of Science, Industrial Engineering, Tehran Polytechnic University (Iran), 2004 OTHER GRADUATE STUDIES Ph.D. Student in Sociology, University of Kentucky (PhD coursework completed) Ph.D. Student in Marketing, University of Kentucky RESEARCH INTERESTS Retailing (Retail Buying, Category Management, Design and Atmospherics) Customer Analytics Marketing Strategy TEACHING INTERESTS Data Analytics, Marketing Research, Marketing Management, Retailing and Sales Management DISSERTATION Saying Yes to the dress: The value of the Wisdom Of the Crowd in forecasting demand in fashion and apparel retail buying (Proposal defended, Final defense expected in summer 2018) Dissertation Chair : Professor Murali Mantrala Committee Members : Professor Lisa Scheer (Marketing) Professor Peter Bloch (Marketing) Professor Dan Turban (Management) Professor Cory Koedel (Economics) DISSERTATION SUMMARY The focus of this dissertation is to help apparel retail buyers make better decisions (forecasting demand) which directly affect retailers profitability. Currently, retailers are losing billions of dollars in markdowns and stockouts. While the magnitude of stockouts is very hard to estimate, Forbes magazine (2015) recently reported that major retailers and department stores in the U.S. sell over half of their apparel items after significant markdowns which have a sizeable effect on their margins. *U.S. Citizen

2 Uncertainty and volatility of demand in apparel/fashion markets make predicting future demand a very complicated task for buyers. While the forecasting literature has made significant improvements over the years, most forecasting models rely on historical sales data. ARIMA type models require data from several previous periods. This is also the case for Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based models. Moreover, ANN models require significant amount of time and computational power. The practical problem in the context of fashion and apparel products is that historical data usually do not exist! Fashion products, by definition, are new and buyers can t rely on historical sales data to predict potential sales of a new collection. That is why major department stores and apparel retail buyers make subjective judgment about the potential salability of the items they buy. In other words, they make a subjective judgment on the potential demand across markets in which the retailer is doing business and come up with a number which is usually based on intuition or gut-feeling. Trade press and academic literature suggest that these subjective forecasts are usually far from the actual demand that is later realized. In this dissertation, the main argument is that fashion buyers forecasts of future demand are affected by biases and inconsistencies in human decision making. In other words, an individual buyer s decision can be impacted by variety of cognitive and emotional biases documented in social psychology and behavioral economics literatures. After qualitative exploratory interviews with 24 professional fashion buyers, I found that overconfidence and optimism could be the most important biases in the specific context of fashion buying. Recent research suggests that utilizing crowdsourcing or Wisdom of the Crowd can reduce biases in decision making where the average prediction of the crowd about an uncertain outcome outperforms that of individual experts and professional decision makers. In four experiments, I explore the impact of overconfidence and optimism on individual buyers forecasts and compare their forecasts with that of the average of a group of ordinary customers. I will demonstrate when crowdsourcing could help buyers making more accurate forecasts. Finally, a decision support system for fashion buyers will be proposed. HONORS AND AWARDS 2018 Haring Symposium presenter, Indiana University 2017 AMS Doctoral Consortium Fellow 2017 Mittelstaedt Doctoral Symposium presenter, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Raymond and Susan Chen International PhD Scholarship, University of Missouri 2016 Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award (as primary instructor), University of Missouri 2016 AMA Sheth Consortium Fellow, University of Notre Dame Wharton Customer Analytics (WCAI) data grant 2014 Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant Award, University of Missouri 2014 ISBM PhD Student Camp Fellow 2014 Summer Research Fellowship, University of Missouri Ponder Scholarship, University of Missouri Trulaske College of Business Ph.D. Scholarship, University of Missouri Strategic Priority Scholarship, University of Missouri 2

3 RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS Kamran-Disfani, Omid, Murali K. Mantrala, Alicia Izquierdo-Yusta, and María Pilar Martínez-Ruiz. "The impact of retail store format on the satisfaction-loyalty link: An empirical investigation." Journal of Business Research 77 (2017): Bloch, Peter and Omid Kamran-Disfani, A framework for studying outdoor atmospherics in Retailing Conditionally accepted at Academy of Marketing Science Review (AMS Review) BOOK CHAPTER Murali K. Mantrala and Omid Kamran-Disfani (2018) "Category Management and Captains in Handbook of Research in Retailing (eds: Katrijn Gielens and Els Gijsbrechts), Edward Elgar Publishing. RESEARCH IN PROGRESS (in addition to the Dissertation) Kamran-Disfani, Omid, Murali K. Mantrala, and Vamsi Kanuri, The impact of product-based Limited Time Offers on firm performance Status: Data obtained from Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative, Final preparation of the manuscript in progress, to be submitted to Journal of Marketing Basuroy, Suman, Shailendra Gajanan, Murali K. Mantrala, and Omid Kamran-Disfani, Should Store Brands Be Fully Integrated Into Category Management? Status: Final preparation for submission to Journal of Marketing Research CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS Kamran-Disfani, Omid, Murali K. Mantrala, and Vamsi K. Kanuri (2017), Not Always on the Menu: The impact of Product-based Limited Time Offers on Sales Marketing Science Conference, Los Angeles, California. Bloch, Peter and Omid Kamran-Disfani (2017), A theoretical framework for studying outdoor atmospherics in Retailing, Mittelstaedt Doctoral Symposium, University of Nebraska -Lincoln. Kamran-Disfani, Omid, Murali K. Mantrala, and Vamsi K. Kanuri (2017), An Empirical Investigation into the Effect of Loyalty Programs and Limited Time Offers on Customer Behavior and Firm Performance Wharton Customer Analytics Symposium, Philadelphia, Pennsylavania. Kamran-Disfani, Omid, Murali K. Mantrala, Alicia Izquierdo Yusta, and Maria Del Pilar Martinez Ruiz (2014), The Impact of Retail Store Format on the Shopper Satisfaction-Loyalty Relationship, Marketing Science Conference, Atlanta, Georgia. 3

4 COLLABORATION WITH FIRMS - Recently Signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with a national retailer to work on their e-commerce platform - Negotiating two potential agreements with a major grocery retailer and an apparel retailer to help them with customer analytics - Planning collaborative research projects with GREENFIELDS INSTITUTE OF BUSINESS (International consulting company headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa) in South Africa, Sweden and the U.S. TEACHING EXPERIENCE Principles of Marketing (Undergraduate Hybrid online/offline course) Summer 2017 (330 students) 4.30/5 composite rating Summer 2016 (190 students) 4.55/5 composite rating Marketing Research (Undergraduate) Spring 2018 In Progress (2 sections) Fall /5 composite rating Spring /5 composite rating Fall /5 composite rating Spring /5 composite rating Fall /5 composite rating Marketing Management (Undergraduate) Spring 2018 In Progress Fall /5 composite rating Spring 2017 (section 003) 4.50/5 composite rating Spring 2017 (section 006) 4.49/5 composite rating Guest Speaker/Instructor Marketing Databases and SQL MBA Course, University of Missouri Fall

5 SERVICE REVIEWER Journal of MacroMarketing Frontiers in Psychology Journal (Organizational Psychology section) AMA Winter Educators Conference, 2016 AMA Summer Educators Conference, 2015 AMA Winter Educators Conference, 2015 STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS President, Iranian Student Association, University of Missouri PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS American Marketing Association Academy of Marketing Science Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative, University of Pennsylvania Category Management Association SELECTED DOCTORAL COURESEWORK MARKETING SEMINARS Introduction to Research in Marketing (Professor Lisa Scheer) Seminar in Consumer Behavior (Professor Peter Bloch and Professor Ratti Rattneshwar) Seminar in Marketing Strategy (Professor Detelina Marinova) Seminar in Marketing Models (Professor Murali Mantrala and Professor Srinath Gopalakrishna) Applied Marketing Models (Professor Detelina Marinova) METHODOLOGY Applied Econometrics Bayesian Analysis Optimization Qualitative Methods (University of Kentucky) Experimental Design (University of Kentucky) Microeconomic Theory Game Theory Stochastic Processes Social Network Analysis (University of Kentucky) Multivariate Analysis (University of Kentucky) 5

6 PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYEMNT Vice President of Marketing and Contract Negotiations Disfani Holding Corporation, Toronto, Canada Business Development Consultant Disfani Holding Corporation, Toronto, Canada Advertising Consultant NT Graphics and Advertising, Tehran, Iran REFERENCES Professor Murali Mantrala Sam M. Walton Distinguished Professor of Marketing and Chair Department of Marketing Trulaske College of Business University of Missouri-Columbia Professor Lisa K. Scheer Emma S. Hibbs Distinguished Professor and Professor of Marketing Department of Marketing Trulaske College of Business University of Missouri-Columbia Professor Peter Bloch Pinkney C. Walker Teaching Excellence Professor and Professor of Marketing Department of Marketing Trulaske College of Business University of Missouri-Columbia Professor Stephen P. Borgatti Paul Chellgren Chair of Management LINKS Center for network analysis of organizations Gatton College of Business & Economics University of Kentucky Lexington, KY