Search results

Defines a particular form of returned purchases and explores its pervasiveness. Consumers who engage in “retail borrowing” purchase items with the deliberate intention to return such items once they have been used satisfactorily. To facilitate the purchases of good and to act responsibly when purchased items may be defective retailers have extended generous return policies to consumers. Increasingly however some consumers have taken advantage of such policies to “borrow” needed items from retailers. Provides an insight into retail borrowing and the type of most commonly “borrowed” products. Also identifies reasons that trigger the willingness to “borrow” from retailers and discuss the emotions and thoughts that accompany the behavior. Discusses the managerial and social perspectives of the phenomenon.

This study aims to examine the relationship between the risk-aversion level of return policies and customer trust in online shopping in three countries in the Middle East.

In the first step, the different types of return policies of online shoppers and the risk-aversion level were determined by surveying 18 online shops and interviewing 21 customers. The risk-aversion level of these policies was found in the experts’ panel. In the second step, the experiences of 573 consumers when facing seller’s return messages, perceived risk and consumer trust in three countries (UAE, Iraq and Iran) were collected through a questionnaire. Finally, the gathered data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results indicated that risk-averse return policies taken by online vendors led to lower consumer trust. Moreover, customer perceived risk mediated the relationship between return policies’ risk-aversion level and trust in Iraq and Iran. At the same time, there was no significant association between return policies and perceived risk in UAE. In addition, perceived risk wholly mediated the relationship between return policies’ risk aversion and trust in vendors in Iran, but this role was minor in Iraq.

Among the intercultural studies, especially in the Middle East, this is one of the first studies based on the marketing and sales management in an online shopper’s supply chain. Moreover, the investigation of return policies in online commerce is another innovative aspect of the present paper.

Although dysfunctional behaviors by customers is increasingly being recognized by both scholars and practitioners, “illegitimate” complaining, in the form of fraudulent returns by customers, is under‐researched. The aim of this study is to address this gap in extant knowledge through explicitly focusing on uncovering factors which permit consumers to exploit retailers' liberal return policies when fraudulently returning products that they know they have used or damaged.

In‐depth interviews were utilized as the main data collection method. Interviews were conducted amongst service employees and customers. A total of 87 interviews were conducted with front‐line employees and managers of 12 general retail outlets. Customer interviewing involved 96 interviews. Potential customer informants were randomly contacted with a request to participate in a study of customer service and returning goods.

Data analysis revealed ten main factors that appear to be related to customers' likelihood of successfully, fraudulently returning products.

As with other similar studies of this nature, the findings and implications are limited by the research design and methods employed. However, these limitations also indicate potentially fruitful avenues of future research. Future studies could employ different methods and explore differing contexts to gauge the generalizability of findings.

The findings of the study have a range of implications for practitioners and policy makers. Insights are generated into the extent of fraudulent returning and the factors which facilitate successful fraudulent returns. As such, practitioners could use such insights to reduce the frequency of such episodes. Public policy implications centre on highlighting the issues which policy makers may wish to consider.

The current study is the first to explore how (rather than, why) consumers exploit firms' return policies and fraudulently defraud retailers. As such, a fundamental and stark contribution centres on the finding of widespread, recidivist fraudulent returning among those interviewed. Ten facilitators of fraudulent returning were identified, providing rich insights into how customers are able, successfully, to return used and damaged products.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to empirically test whether a “one size fits all” strategy fits the fashion e-commerce business and second, to evaluate whether consumer returns are a central aspect of the creation of profitability and, if so, to discuss the role of returns management (RM) in the supply chain strategy.

Transactional sales and return data were analysed and used to categorise customers based on their buying and returning behaviours, measuring each customer's net contribution margins.

The e-commerce business collects a vast quantity of data, but these data are seldom used for the development of service differentiation. This study analysed behaviour patterns and determined that the segmentation of customers on the basis of both sales and return patterns can facilitate a differentiated service delivery approach.

This research empirically supports the theory that customer buying and returning behaviours can be used to appropriately categorise customers and thereby guide the development of a more differentiated service approach.

The findings support a differentiated service delivery system that utilises a more dynamic approach, conserving resources and linking the supply chain and/or organisational strategies with customers' buying and returning behaviours to avoid over and underservicing customers.

Consumer returns are often viewed as a negative aspect of doing business; interestingly, however, the authors revealed that the most profitable customer is a repeat customer who frequently returns goods.

The purpose of this paper is to make contributions toward new knowledge and understanding of how marketers can provide effective online customization experiences for customers. The practicality of online mass customization has received much attention as consumers perceive more value from customized products than from their standardized counterparts. Little research has been done to understand consumers’ behavioral intentions in response to these value additions. This study incorporates product information framing in developing and empirically testing a model of the relationship between online customization and price sensitivity, endowment addition and expected likelihood of product return.

The relationship among the constructs specified in the model was tested using multiple group structural equation modeling analysis.

The findings indicate that consumers perceived knowledge gain via customization process influences the utilitarian value, which directly impacts levels of likelihood of product return and price sensitivity. The process value, on the hedonic side, influences more on the endowment addition. Endowment addition is found to mediate the relationship between the hedonic benefits and the two utilitarian outcome variables: price sensitivity and likelihood of product return.

Understanding the consequences of customization is particularly crucial for marketers. This research is the first to expand and further our knowledge of customization, particularly in relation to its outcomes of customers’ behavioral intentions.

There is limited literature linking e-fulfillment and product type with postpurchase consumer behavior measures like loyalty, even though there has been a rapid increase in e-tailing. E-fulfillment is defined in literature as a sequence of processes. Each process in this sequence is expected to have a different impact on consumer loyalty across product type. Thus relative importance of e-fulfillment processes leading to consumer loyalty. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of e-fulfillment on consumer loyalty across two product types: “standard, regular” and “physical product” (e.g. book, clothing, etc.) and “standard, nonregular” and “physical product” (e.g. computer, refrigerator, etc.) using the peak-end rule theory for an e-tailer.

To know the consumer loyalty for e-fulfillment across the two product types, the partial least square-structural equation modeling approach aided by the SmartPLS 3 tool was used for data analysis as it avoids biases in the parameter estimation in regression analysis. A total of 603 consumer responses through an online and physically administered questionnaire were obtained and were used for the empirical analysis.

Results indicate that for standard, nonregular and physical products, all the e-fulfillment components (customization strategy, website quality, distribution strategy, last mile delivery and return management) positively impact consumer loyalty. Except for the customization strategy, for standard regular and physical product types, all other e-fulfillment components positively impact consumer loyalty.

This study will be helpful to e-tail managers to configure the e-fulfillment components according to product types, thereby increasing consumer loyalty.

While some e-fulfillment components have been linked to consumer loyalty in literature, there is no study establishing linkages between e-fulfillment as a construct and consumer loyalty across product types. This has implications for decision makers in e-tail as the study provides e-fulfillment strategy customization across product types for achieving consumer loyalty in e-tail, a key marketing metric.

The purpose of this paper is to explore, describe and categorise practices of managing product returns empirically in internet retailing.

A multiple case study was conducted involving 12 e-commerce firms and 4 logistics service providers. An integrative data collection approach of semi-structured interviews, documentation and observations was used to gain comprehensive managerial and operational descriptions of returns management (RM) processes.

The findings show inconsistent RM processes, with a plethora of practices implemented and organised differently across firms. RM processes are ambiguous; their design is a result of incremental changes over time, lacking strategy and goals. There is a mismatch between how they are described and understood in the literature and how they are actually used. Practices in gatekeeping, avoidance and reverse logistics are defined and categorised. These serve as a typology of practices for managers to (re)consider, along with 15 propositions on how RM is practised.

The range of RM practices and the processes reflect a lack of scholarly attention and strategic view. Research is needed to develop clear goals on how the RM process can be better aligned with business strategies.

The typology of practices is a benchmark for internet retailers in their design of efficient RM processes.

Systematic and empirical research on RM is scarce compared to forward management. The study bridges this gap as one of the first to describe RM practices in depth, define service as a key activity, and identify a mismatch between theory and practice.

With the booming of live commerce, sellers provide products through not only their traditional channels but also the anchors who show products by live broadcast, forming a live commerce supply chain. In fact, such selling mode generates two effects: the live broadcast service of the anchor affects the return rate of products sold live (live commerce effect) and related products of the manufacturer sold via its own channel (live commerce spillover effect). In this paper, the authors investigate the impacts of both live commerce and live commerce spillover effect on the price decisions as well as the anchor's service effort.

The authors establish a live commerce supply chain model where the manufacturer sells related products directly and by the anchor with a wholesale price contract. The manufacturer decides the price of product sold directly based on the anchor's broadcast effort since there exists the live commerce spillover effects. Backward induction is used to solve the Stackelberg game between the manufacturer and the anchor.

The results show that (1) the existence of the live commerce spillover effect brings more profit to the manufacturer while it reduces the anchor's profit. Moreover, the total profit of the live commerce supply chain first decreases and then increases as the intensity of the live commerce spillover effect improves. (2) The pricing of products sold directly by the manufacturer and sold through the anchor is nonmonotonic with respect to the live commerce spillover effect. (3) The increase in return cost always leads to an increase in the profit of the anchor, whether it is borne by the anchor or by the consumer. (4) If the baseline return probability is high, the anchor should increase her effort, thus securing more profit. However, the spillover effect of live commerce and the horizontal differences between products will discourage the anchor from increasing the live streaming service level.

The study proposes the live commerce supply chain model where the anchor balances the cost and benefit of her live broadcast effort, which lowers the consumers expected return possibility. In addition the live commerce spillover effect is introduced, reducing the expected return rate for the related products without live broadcast (in the direct channel). With the inter-influence of live commerce, the price competition between the live anchor and the manufacturer becomes more complex. By solving the typical live commerce game model, managerial insights are given for the decision makers among the live commerce supply chain.

This study conducts a systematic literature review of e-tail product returns research. E-tail product returns are essentially acquisition of products that have been sold through purely online or brick-and-click channels and then returned by consumer to business.

Using a systematic literature review protocol, we identified 75 peer-reviewed articles on e-tail product returns, conducted bibliometric analysis and content analysis of the articles and summarised our findings.

The findings reveal that the subject of e-tail returns is a new research area; academics have started to investigate several aspects of e-tail returns through different research methodologies and theoretical foundations. Further research is required in leading e-commerce countries and on key areas such as omni-channel returns management, customer satisfaction and service, the impact of resources such as people skills, the benefits of technology and IT systems in managing e-tail returns.

The study offers a summative account of current e-tail knowledge areas, which can serve as a reference guide for e-tailers to develop strategies for more efficient and competitive product returns.

This study contributes theoretically by developing clusters of key themes or knowledge areas about e-tail returns. It also provides a conceptual framework for e-tail returns management, which can be used as a springboard for further empirical research.

This study aims to distinguish two regret conditions, other-blame regret (O-regret) and self-blame regret (S-regret), and investigate the underlying mechanism and boundary conditions of the relationship between regret and negative word of mouth (NWOM).

Four experiments and one survey study test hypotheses regarding how O-regret and S-regret influence NWOM through mediating mechanism of anger and sadness and how the impact of regret on NWOM is moderated by boundary conditions.

The results show that consumers who experience O-regret transmit more NWOM than those who experience S-regret. Anger is a dominant emotion when consumers experience O-regret and mediates the impact of regret on NWOM, and sadness is a dominant emotion when consumers experience S-regret and mediates the impact of regret on NWOM. In addition, purchased price (full vs discount price), regret context (private vs public context) and return policy (strict vs lenient policy) are found to moderate the effect of regret on NWOM.

This study was conducted in China, which has a unique business environment that may differ from other countries. Therefore, this research opens a new avenue to further examine such a phenomenon in countries where a more lenient return policy is a standard business practice. Cross-nation studies comparing how different return policies and other business environment conditions are warranted in future research.

The study provides several insights for marketers considering the management of NWOM by understanding consumer O-regret and S-regret in either online or offline retailing situations.

This paper contributes to the extant literature by distinguishing different outcome regrets. The theoretical conceptualization and empirical findings shed further lights on the relationship between regret and other negative emotions and how O-regret and S-regret lead to different impacts on NWOM through different paths of mediation mechanism.