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Applying a middle-range theorizing to premises of signaling theory and the scarcity principle, this study aims to investigate the mechanisms and effects of different patterns of post-stockout disclosures that highlight the limited supply and high quality of a durable good on consumer satisfaction with the shopping experience and purchase intention, mediated by consumer perceived product scarcity.

The hypotheses are tested with two scenario-based experiments. The first experiment—a between-subjects design—explores the effect of post-stockout disclosures on consumers' perceived scarcity, satisfaction, and purchase intention. The second experiment – a within-subject design – examines the impact of time on consumer responses to stockouts.

Results indicate that perceived product scarcity mediates the relationship between post-stockout disclosures and consumer outcomes. Specifically, post-stockout disclosures present an indirect positive effect on consumer purchase intention, despite reducing satisfaction beyond the effects of the stockout. These results are consistent when disclosures are sent through multiple channels. Results also show that consumers' perceived scarcity and purchase intention decrease over time while dissatisfaction levels remain the same when stockouts persist.

Even though consumers will be dissatisfied upon experiencing a stockout, specific patterns of post-stockout disclosures can be a valuable strategy for consumer retention and lost sales prevention.

While recent consumer-centric supply chain management literature has investigated mitigation strategies of detrimental consumer response to stockouts, such as “save-the-sale” tactics and price discounts, the mechanisms and effects of different patterns of post-stockouts disclosures highlighting the limited supply and high quality of the product are yet to be investigated.

This study aims to determine the factors and dynamic systems behaviour of essential medicine stockout in public health-care supply chains. The authors examine the constraints and effects of mental models on medicine stockout to develop a dynamic theory of medicine availability towards saving patients’ lives.

This study uses a mixed-method approach. Starting with a survey method, followed by in-depth interviews with stakeholders within five health-care supply chains to determine the dynamic feedback leading to stockout and conclude by developing a network mental model for medicines availability.

The authors identified five constraints and developed five case mental models. The authors develop a dynamic theory of medicine availability across cases and identify feedback loops and variables leading to medicine availability.

The need to include mental models of stakeholders like manufacturers and distributors of medicines to understand the system completely. Group surveys are prone to power dynamics and bias from group thinking. This survey’s quantitative output could minimize the bias.

This study uniquely uses a mixed-method of survey method and in-depth interviews of experts to assess the essential medicine stockout in Nigeria. To improve medicine availability, the authors develop a dynamic network mental model to understand the system structure, feedback and behaviour driving stockouts. This research will benefit public policymakers and hospital managers in designing policies that reduce medicine stockout.

Effects of stockouts on purchase decisions have been examined from a variety of perspectives; little is yet known about how consumers react to stockouts in online shopping contexts. The present study investigates how stockout reactions depend on a consumer's mindset and familiarity with a website and investigates the role of negative affect in determining a consumer's stockout reaction.

Shopping mindsets (deliberative vs. implemental) and website familiarity (high vs. low) were manipulated in an online experiment consisting of a simulated shopping task at an existing website which next was presented as having a stockout. The study observed the participants' switching responses and measured their negative affect.

Findings indicate that when encountering an online stockout, consumers in an implemental mindset are more likely to switch away from the website than those in a deliberative mindset and are more likely to search for additional items at a competing site. Consumers who are more familiar with the website where they encounter the stockout display a higher likelihood of defecting to a competing site; however, when they are in an implemental mindset, their inclination to defect decreases. The study also shows that the strength of negative emotions affects OOS responses in that buyers that experience more negative emotions are more likely to defect from the site.

The study's findings provide suggestions as to how retailers can manage and minimize defection behaviours associated with online stockouts. In designing operational and marketing strategies retailers need to pay close attention to how consumers' individual mindsets may vary by trait or circumstance and how they hence may respond differently to stockouts.

The authors introduce a novel perspective to the literature on stockout induced reactions and contribute by furthering investigation into previously unexplored specific consumer characteristics and intricacies of stockouts that drive particular stockout reactions.

Perceived as an antidote to poor execution, interest in radio frequency identification (RFID)-enabled visibility has grown. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether and how RFID-enabled visibility with item-level tagging improves store execution.

The authors conducted three field-based experiments in collaboration with two Fortune 500 retailers.

RFID-enabled visibility resulted in a sizable decrease in inventory record inaccuracy and out-of-stocks for inventory held in both the backroom and on the sales floor. The decrease in inventory record inaccuracy and out-of-stocks was even greater among products stored primarily on the sales floor suggesting the benefits from increased visibility accrue to sales floor inventory management processes. In contrast, the authors found no significant improvement in inventory record inaccuracy and no substantive improvement in out-of-stocks among products stored primarily in the backroom suggesting that increased visibility does not improve backroom management processes.

The authors recommend retailers focus on sales floor inventory management when seeking to improve store execution through the adoption of RFID-enabled visibility. In the context, only partial evidence exists that backroom inventory management improves with RFID-enabled visibility.

Retailers seeking to invest in RFID technology must estimate potential performance improvements before making firm-specific cost-benefit analyses. They must also understand where and how these performance improvements will accrue. This research uniquely presents the results of a three field experiments that quantify the changes in retail execution associated with RFID adoption.

In calculations of inventory control costs, the effects of stockouts are often assumed or avoided because of the lack of accounting data for reasonable measurements. The authors describe the development of stockout cost models incorporating decisions made by consumers in an actual retail situation. Equations for calculating the revenue differences are based on the consumer decision alternatives. The results of a consumer survey, combined with retail prices for the product lines in question, enable the financial effects of stockouts to be calculated.

The purpose of this paper is to increase our understanding of the causes for stockouts in retailing.

Mixed methods study, using instore observations, interviews with key informants in consumer goods and retailing, and a field study of stockouts and their causes in multiple wholesale stores over two years.

The results indicate that the causes for stockouts are specific to retailer, store, category and item. Improvements to store operations and the coordination of store delivery and shelf replenishment are most effective in reducing stockouts. Manual audits of stockouts and their causes benefit instore execution and provide the level of detail necessary for management to prioritize areas of improvement.

Future research may investigate the operational and cost impact of incorporating demand seasonality in shelf replenishment that may lead to an improved coordination of replenishment and demand cycles.

A procedure is proposed to help store managers reduce stockouts well below the global average of 8.3 percent.

The paper extends the literature by providing a comprehensive set of itemized causes of retail stockouts and reflects implications for sales‐data driven research. It adds to the emergent research that applies service‐dominant logic to retail stockout research.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of retailers’ consumer communications in prompting the choice of an in-stock alternative to an out-of-stock first-choice product.

Four between-subjects experiments assessed the extent to which the likelihood of a retail customer switching to a similarly-priced alternative when a first choice was out-of-stock was affected by messages concerning stockout status (Studies 1a and 1b). They further examined the interaction effects on participants’ preference of messages comparing the available versus unavailable options and stating stockout status (Study 2) and those giving information on the reasons for the stockout and on its status (Study 3).

Participants maintained their original preference for an out-of-stock product unless an external restriction on choice prompted them to forsake it or they perceived a strong reason to opt for an in-stock alternative. There was a greater tendency to switch if the alternative offered a potential “gain” or the reasons given for a stockout were irrelevant to product performance, whether the participant was expecting imminent re-stocking. Switching was triggered when the available alternative was directly comparable to the original or the retailer’s explanation related to an attribute judged trivial, but only if short supply was expected to continue.

The studies add to current understanding of how shoppers respond to unavailability of a first-choice product by examining the effect on switching behavior of messages about the stockout situation that are communicated deliberately or inadvertently by retailers.

This paper aims to propose a statistical method to measure the impacts of stockouts on demand, using a segmented linear regression model.

The proposed method is applied to data sets from large retail chains to measure the impacts of stockouts of an item on substitute items. The measured impacts of stockouts can be used to estimate the true demand of the sold-out item by recovering the lost demand (turned-away demand), as well as to estimate the true demand of the substitute item by reducing the extra demand.

This study found that estimated true demand by the proposed method improves sales forecasting and calculation of the annual expected revenue.

A new method to measure the impacts of stockouts on the demand of substitute items was proposed. The proposed method is practical, in that, it is conceptually simple, computationally efficient and applicable in general scenarios. Also, the proposed method is scalable for larger data sets.

Details an empirical study of the measurement of stockout costs in a distribution system and examines the incidence of stockouts in the supply of spare parts to the motor trade. Comprehensive studies were conducted in three major car workshops in Sweden and cost data collected from a variety of sources, including structured observation, quasi‐experiments, interviews and secondary data from internal information systems. On the basis of this research, a typology of stockout cost situations has been constructed and central concepts and measurement models developed. Results reveal that stockout costs are measurable in the system under review; information about stockout costs can have a significant impact on managerial decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the direct and interaction effects of shelf space, case pack quantity, and consumer demand on shelf stockouts, i.e. stockouts at the shelf level when inventory is available in the backroom of a retail store.

This study uses discrete‐event simulation based on data collected from the ready‐to‐eat breakfast cereal category with multiple stockkeeping units (SKUs) to model a retail supply chain consisting of a supplier, a retailer, and consumers.

The results indicate that shelf space and case pack quantity have direct effects on shelf stockouts. Furthermore, evidence is found for interactions among shelf space, case pack quantity and consumer demand. Though many retailers adopt simple heuristics for shelf space allocation, such as a multiple of case pack quantity, this study suggests that such heuristics tend to over‐ or underestimate shelf space requirements when consumer demand is ignored.

This study suggests that managers should allocate shelf space for SKUs on the basis of not only case pack quantity but also consumer demand.