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The rapid development of the Internet has led to an increasingly significant role for E-commerce business. This study examines how the green supply chain (GSC) operates on the E-commerce online channel (resell mode and agency mode) and the traditional offline channel with information sharing under demand uncertainty.

This study builds a multistage game model that considers the manufacturer selling green products through different channels. On the traditional offline channel, the competing retailers decide whether to share demand signals. Regarding the resale mode of E-commerce online channel, just E-tailer 1 determines whether to share information and decides the retail price. In the agency mode, the manufacturer decides the retail price directly, and E-tailer 2 sets the platform rate.

This study reveals that information accuracy is conducive to information value and profits on both channels. Interestingly, the platform fee rate in agency mode will inhibit the effect of a positive demand signal. Information sharing will cause double marginal effects, and price competition behavior will mitigate such effects. Additionally, when the platform fee rate is low, the manufacturer will select the E-commerce online channel for operation, but the retailers' profit is the highest in the traditional channel.

This research explores the interplay between different channel structures and information sharing in a GSC, considering price competition and demand uncertainty. Besides, we also considered what behaviors and factors will amplify or transfer the effect of double marginalization.

This study aims to explore the use of gamification elements by micro and small e-tailers to enhance customer loyalty. Additionally, this research seeks to identify the most promising gamification elements that can be utilised for this purpose.

The authors adopt a qualitative approach to examine the impact of gamification on online customer loyalty to micro and small e-tailers. Data were gathered using a combination of two types of expert interviews. Semi-structured interviews were held with micro and small e-tailers while large e-tailers served as the control group. Structured interviews based on multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) models were conducted to determine the most promising gamification elements.

The content analysis reveals that gamification has significant potential for fostering customer loyalty and offering various other benefits. However, small e-tailers often refrain from implementing gamification solutions due to the resource requirements in terms of finances, time, information technology and human capital. By assigning weights as an essential step in MCDA models, the authors determined that badges, medals, quests, avatars and competitions are the most promising gamification options for small e-tailers’ efforts to enhance customer loyalty.

The study makes a unique contribution to the understanding of the usefulness of gamification in augmenting customer loyalty and identifying essential gamification elements for micro and small e-tailers.

This study explores coopetition opportunities between e-tailers and brick-and-mortar (BM) retailers and provides a conceptual framework. These opportunities may be triggered by events such as social distancing causing crises (SDCC).

A grounded theory based approach was used wherein 119 news articles and 48 academic papers are the main sources of data to analyse the real-world responses. A typical qualitative methodology, including open and axial coding, was used. To further analyse the insights obtained, six in-depth interviews were conducted.

Non-customer-interfacing-based coopetition, such as small BM stores serving as e-marketplace sellers and customer-interfacing-based coopetition, such as large BM stores serving as showrooms, are some potential coopetition opportunities.

The majority of the available studies dwell more on offline retailers developing online channels. This study investigates the opposite situation and conceptualises a new understanding of how e-tailers and BM retailers can work together more harmoniously. This study can be used as a springboard by academicians for future research on a larger scale. Five research propositions are offered that can guide hypothesis generation. Development of case studies and consulting services for the industry are the other research opportunities.

Social distancing as a measure may vanish from the world with time; however, social distancing's implications are still pertinent given that new diseases, including new variants of pandemic potential, could continue to emerge. The study puts forward propositions based on theoretical dimensions and second-order themes derived from first-order categories. These propositions are about the drivers of coopetition and the opportunities with both large and small BM stores that e-tailers can leverage during a crisis, given that launching e-tailers' own BM stores demands large investments. This study has social and economic implications too.

This study investigates coopetition, an important trend but lacking adequate research. Whilst only few studies examine coopetition from a crises' perspective, this study investigates develops a new understanding of coopetition opportunities between e-tailers and BM retailers. This study adds to the scarce literature how such opportunities may be triggered by events such as SDCC.

Research regarding the quality of e-tailers’ service during product returns is sparse and the little that has been performed treats returns as recovery from failure. However, that view is outdated. E-tailers' product return practices have substantially evolved and customers' return behavior has considerably increased, in turn, influencing expectations of customers. Thus, a need arises to revise the understanding of how customers evaluate the quality of e-tailers' service during product returns. This study conceptualizes customer-perceived e-return service quality, identifies e-return's current dimensions, and offers directions for measurement.

This study is conducted in two stages. The first stage follows an abductive approach, with a continuous back-and-forth movement between existing theory and two qualitative data sets to identify the dimensions of e-return service quality. Scale development process is started in the second stage to offer directions for measurement based on the empirically grounded dimensions.

The conceptualization of e-return service quality identifies six dimensions: (1) owning of responsibility, (2) return convenience, (3) return remedies, (4) service team support, (5) site's return friendliness, and (6) returns diligence. The factor analysis supports the six-factor solution that can be employed for developing a valid scale in future.

The study suggests that e-tailers who are looking to differentiate themselves through superior e-return service quality should focus on customizing their service through excellent performance on these dimensions.

The paper updates and refines the understanding of service quality in the context of product returns service provided by e-tailers and thus offers a novel contribution.

The purpose of this study was to find different effects of e‐tailer attributes on consumer attitude in fashion product purchase situations according to e‐tailer types.

A quantitative study with a survey method was adopted to test the significance of the paths which construct the structural equation model.

As a result of the study, e‐tailers were classified into three types: comprehensive mall, fashion specialty mall, and limited brand mall. In addition three attribute dimensions were derived from the statistical analyses: transaction fulfillment, variety, and accessibility. Transaction fulfillment and variety were the critical dimensions for the comprehensive mall and the limited brand mall, whereas variety was the only significant dimension for the fashion specialty mall. According to the multi‐group comparison, it was found that similar strategic implications can be applied to comprehensive and limited brand malls.

The variety dimension be further researched. With variety being equally important for all of the e‐tailer types, specific sub‐dimensions need to be identified.

The paper provides value in classifying the e‐tailer type and investigating the attributes.

The purpose of this paper is to report results from an experimental study in which participants rank e-tailer quality on the basis of descriptions involving five attributes (reputation of retailer, site usability, security, delivery and customer support). The paper further explores how the relative importance of these attributes to perceived e-tailer quality is impacted by customer demographic and behavioral characteristics (such as gender, age, frequency of online purchasing and use of online reviews).

Individual-level conjoint models are estimated to determine the relative importance of these five attributes to perceptions of e-tailer quality.

The relative importance of these five attributes to perceived e-tailer quality are impacted by customer specific characteristics and online behaviors, namely, age, the frequency of prior online purchasing, the frequency of use of online reviews and the importance attached to the availability of a large number of online product reviews.

Managerial implications that help e-tailers develop more effective, targeted strategies for enhancing the quality of their websites and increasing customer loyalty are presented.

The use of conjoint analysis for decomposing overall judgments of e-tailer quality to derive the relative importance of specific e-tailing attributes offers a realistic way to understand how online customers perceive and evaluate e-tailer quality.

With the vigorous development of the e-commerce delivery service industry, delivery service has become an important factor for e-tailers to obtain the market competitive advantage. However, how to choose the best delivery service strategy is a difficult problem for e-tailers in practice. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of delivery service on e-tailers and online platforms.

Based on the Stackelberg game, the research study establishes and solves three models, namely dual self-supporting delivery service model, dual third-party delivery service model and differential delivery service model.

The results show that when the self-supporting and third-party delivery cost coefficients are all small, no matter which delivery service providers the competitor selects, the e-tailer selects delivery with a lower service fee. When the self-supporting and third-party delivery service fee are all low, no matter which delivery service providers the competitor selects, the e-tailer selects delivery with a smaller service cost. Both service fee and service cost determine the choice of e-tailers' delivery strategy. When the commission rate is moderate, both e-tailers are willing to choose the self-supporting delivery strategy, but the platform only prefers to provide self-supporting delivery to them with a lower delivery service sensitivity coefficient.

This paper analyzes the optimal delivery service strategies for e-tailers to compete with competitors, and explores the impacts of parameters for e-tailers and online platforms in their decision-making. The findings provide valuable implications for relevant practices.

To investigate if consumer online patronage is influenced by product category and online store type.

Building on the prior work in this area by the authors and other researchers the study collected data in two phases to investigate the study hypotheses.

The study results suggest that consumers' online patronage is differed based on product type. Interaction effects of the online stores and product type were significant too. Additionally, the rank order of importance of the Internet attribute varied among the three types of online retailers.

The study results should be replicated in other markets. Future studies may also include a variety of different types of online outlets to improve the conclusiveness of the findings reported in this study.

The results should be of interest to the online retailers in choosing the types of merchandise and services to emphasis in the retailers marketing program.

The paper should be of interest to academicians as well as practitioners as it contributes to the small but growing literature in the area of online retailing. It adds to the literature on the product classification paradigm as well as offers practical guidelines for managers.

This paper studies the impact of social distancing causing crises (SDCC) such as pandemics in its early stages on e-tailers demand and supply side operations and provides a conceptual framework for adaptation.

A grounded theory-based approach has been used, wherein journal papers and news articles are the key data sources. Standard qualitative methodology, including open, axial and selective coding has been followed.

The study provides second order themes derived from first-order categories, the theoretical dimensions and their interrelationships on how e-tailers need to adapt to variations in online buying behaviour, manage manpower shortage and daily necessities inventory shortage, during SDCC. Panic buying emerges as a key disrupting factor as it has multiple repercussions on demand and supply side operations of e-tailers.

Exploratory qualitative research such as this is helpful in early development of a research stream and paves the way for future quantitative studies.

This study makes a valuable contribution on e-tailers adaptation to SDCC with significant managerial implications. There are social, economic and policy implications too. For academicians, this study provides a conceptual framework and serves as a springboard for future research.

The study is unique as perhaps it is one of the first to study e-tailers adaptation to SDCC. It contributes to a body of the literature which is currently scarce but expected to grow exponentially in the coming years.

Despite the growing popularity of internet based social media on e-commerce platforms, systematic examination of the emerging phenomenon is scarce. This paper aims to study whether online retailers ' social activity on e-commerce platforms improves their business performance, and if it does, what are the underlying mechanisms.

The paper proposes a typology of online retailers ' social activities on e-commerce platforms. Then drawing on social capital theory and social network theory, the authors develop hypotheses that relate online retailers ' social activities to their business performance. The hypotheses are tested using a large dataset collected from an e-commerce platform in China.

The paper shows that: online retailers ' social activities for friend-making improve their business performance, regardless of the directional attribute of the activities; social activities for advice-seeking decrease online retailers ' business performance; and social activities for advice-giving increase online retailers ' business performance.

The data in the empirical study are from an e-commerce platform in China, hence the research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed hypotheses further.

The paper includes implications for e-commerce market makers and online retailers operating on e-commerce platforms. The authors show that online retailers ' social activities on e-commerce platforms can be an important source of business value. However certain types of social activities may hurt online retailers ' business performance, implying the necessity of a thoughtful social activity strategy in online marketplaces.

This paper represents an early effort to study whether online retailers ' social activities on e-commerce platforms improve their business performance and the underlying mechanisms of the effect.