PhD Thesis Defense Presentation: Nymisha Bandi

Nymisha Bandi, a doctoral student at McGill University in the Operations Management (Retail Management) area will be presenting her thesis defense entitled:

Behavioral Retail Operations to Incentivize Customers

Thursday, June 12, 2025, at 11:00 a.m.
(The defense will be conducted in hybrid mode)

Student Committee Co-chairs: Professor Saibal Ray and Professor Maxime Cohen

Please note that the Defence will be conducted in hybrid mode. If you wish to participate, please contact the PhD office and we will provide you with the defence details.

Abstract

Retailers increasingly use behavioral insights to guide consumer choices, balancing profit goals with promoting health and responsible choices. This proposal examines how promotional tactics like bundling, discount and choice architecture can encourage healthier choices. By combining insights from behavioral economics, operations management, and machine learning, we aim to develop a framework that informs socially responsible retail practices that do not sacrifice profitability thus ensuring that they remain viable over time. In the first chapter, we explore how bundling incentives can encourage healthier food choices in a convenience store setting. Testing three types of add-on bundles—unhealthy, healthy, and choice—we found that healthy bundles increased healthy purchases even when unhealthy options were also available. However, this effect was temporary, with customers reverting to original patterns after the promotion ended. The choice bundle also showed revenue benefits for retailers. The second chapter examines the effectiveness of bundling versus discounting in promoting healthy and unhealthy food choices. Through a field experiment across seven stores, we tested six types of incentives and analyzed their impacts on sales, revenue, and profit. Our findings indicate that discounts are generally more effective for boosting short-term sales, whereas bundling is more advantageous for increasing revenue and profit, particularly for healthy products. In contrast, promotions on unhealthy products showed no significant effects, likely due to the diminishing impact of prolonged promotions over time. Overall, bundling outperforms discounting when considering revenue and profit gains. The third chapter covers a broader range of retail tactics for influencing customer decisions. Reviewing retail operations strategies from in-store design to digital promotions, it details how psychology and data-driven insights shape consumer behavior. This chapter links research with practical strategies, emphasizing the role of pricing, promotion, and digital tools in guiding choices and proposes new research directions in consumer behavior and retail strategy. In conclusion, by building on recent studies that explore the impact of bundling, price framing, and choice architecture, this proposal will extend existing research into the development of actionable, data-driven strategies. Ultimately, this thesis will contribute to the broader field of socially responsible retailing by proposing interventions that can serve the dual purpose of supporting consumer well-being and enhancing retailer profitability.