Managerial response to stockouts: the effect of remedies on consumer behavior

Abstract Stockouts remain a significant problem for retail firms. Estimates of stockout rates in the past fifty years consistently averaged approximately 8 percent. The consequences of stockouts transcend the retail store to include its supporting supply chain. In addition to the effect on the behavior of consumers, stockouts can impact the firm’s replenishment policy, the level and location of inventories and the cost of emergency shipments required to replenish out-of-stock items. Although there is a substantive literature in logistics that measures the frequency of and the consumer respon...