Costello Research Retail

  • March 14, 2025

    While book bans are not new to the American electorate, the rise in these bans since 2021 has sparked contentious media debates. Paradoxically, this has increased the readership of banned books and given politicians on both sides a platform to exploit controversy.

  • March 4, 2025

    China’s complicated and colorful e-commerce landscape gives us a sense of how livestream shopping is transforming retail. Si Xie, assistant professor of information systems and operations management, researches this new trend.

  • October 8, 2024

    Not only are retailers failing to retain and redirect business from shuttered physical locations, but their performance elsewhere also suffers as a result.

  • November 29, 2022

    Mehmet Altug, an associate professor of operations management, has been researching retail returns policies for a decade. The issue has recently come to prominence, as the lenient policies of online retailers have led to skyrocketing return rates (now exceeding 20 percent in the U.S.). Altug’s various academic papers delve into the difficult trade-offs retailers face when setting returns policies. While there are no easy answers, Altug’s research identifies factors that can help retailers achieve more strategic flexibility.