Omnichannel Service Operations with Online and Offline Self-Order Technologies
研究了餐厅采用线上线下自助点餐技术对顾客需求、就业水平和利润的影响，发现自助技术能降低等待成本、增加需求，且在高劳动力成本时反而应增加员工。
Many restaurants have recently implemented self-order technologies across both online and offline channels. Online technology, through websites and mobile apps, allows customers to order and pay before coming to the store; offline technology, such as self-service kiosks, allows store customers to place orders without interacting with a human employee. In this paper, we develop a stylized theoretical model to study the impact of self-order technologies on customer demand, employment levels, and restaurant profits. Our main results follow. First, customers using self-order technologies experience reduced waiting cost and increased demand, and moreover, these benefits may even carry over to customers who do not use these technologies. Second, although public opinion suggests that self-order technologies facilitate job cuts, we find instead that some firms should increase employment levels, and, paradoxically, this recommendation holds for firms with high labor costs. Finally, we find that firms should implement online (offline) self-order technology when customers have high (low) wait sensitivity. The supplementary appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2787 . This paper was accepted by Serguei Netessine, operations management.