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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 multi‐faceted job satisfaction of retail employees. In addition, it seeks to investigate the moderating effect of gender on the relations between proposed antecedents and multifaceted job satisfaction. The seven facets of job satisfaction include satisfaction with supervision, overall job satisfaction, company policy and support, promotion, pay, co‐workers, and customers.

Data for this study constitute a subset of a larger study examining salespeople from both business‐to‐business (B‐T‐B) and retail sales contexts in the USA. A total of 352 usable responses from retail employees were retained. Hypothesized relationships were tested by multiple regression analyses, Chow equality tests, and hierarchical regression analyses.

The study suggests that perceived organizational support, role ambiguity, and emotional exhaustion are the most influential factors for most facets of retail employees' job satisfaction. Role conflict and work‐family conflict only predict satisfaction with promotion, and family‐work conflict does not predict any facets of job satisfaction. Gender differences only played a part in satisfaction with customers. All other variables, such as perceived organizational support, work‐family conflict, family‐work conflict, and emotional exhaustion affect male and female employees differently.

The study provides managerial implications, suggesting that there is no one perfect policy to satisfy retail employees in all aspects and retailers should be more careful in assigning tasks to employees.

The literature concerning multifaceted job satisfaction has contributed significantly to understanding sales personnel job satisfaction. However, as many of the job characteristics for B‐T‐B and retail are different, a separate examination of factors influencing retail employees' job satisfaction is necessary. This study extends the current literature examining the job satisfaction of retail employees by borrowing from retail literature concerning global job satisfaction and from sales management literature about multifaceted job satisfaction.

Relatively scant attention thus far has been accorded in the marketing literature to the examination and explanation of return behaviour of consumers, especially within the mail order industry. The issues examined here consist of the nature and influence of such factors as “buying experience”, “perceived risk”, and “return frequency”. The aim of this paper is to analyse four groups of returners (“heavy returners”, “medium returners”, “light returners”, and “occasional returners”).

This paper details an empirical study of return behaviour based on a field survey that was conducted specifically focusing on the apparel category. Exploratory factor analyses and analyses of variance (ANOVA) have been employed to test the proposed hypotheses.

Results show that there exist different reasons for returns among the four groups of returners. In particular, they differ in their initial shopping motivation for mail order purchases, their group‐specific reasons for product returns, and also in their spending patterns.

These are discussed within the body of the paper.

A number of meaningful implications for mail‐order firms are developed from the empirical findings. While product returners have been thought to be an amorphous category (akin to a “black box”) in the past, this paper highlights the disparate motives for making returns. Specific prescriptions are provided regarding the management of product description, consumer return policy, and the handling of consumer perceived risk.

This paper contributes toward the evolving literature of consumer return behaviour in the context of distance purchasing and also by taking into consideration the heterogeneity of return groups. It looks at the characteristics of the return groups and how they differ in their prior motives of making their purchase decisions.

First party fraud in which consumers commit fraud against retailers is a growing problem. Research in this area is very limited which means that there is almost no guidance available to mitigate this problem. Existing fraud management frameworks focus on the management of other fraud, such as identity theft or employee instigated fraud. Due to the different nature of these frauds, these frameworks do not adequately address first party fraud. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to propose an adapted version of the fraud management lifecycle framework which is specific to first party fraud management.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review and compared/contrasted a number of existing fraud management frameworks in related domains to see which one would be most suitable for first party fraud management.

The authors found Wilhelm’s fraud management framework the most promising for adaptation and application to the first party fraud context. By modifying an existing framework according to the contextual requirements, the authors make the framework much more relevant to first party fraud management.

The framework could help retail managers better understand and manage this growing business problem and open new streams for further research.

This research also makes an important contribution by proposing a framework and by helping bridge a glaring and problematic gap in existing literature and opening up new streams of research.

The purpose of this study is to address two issues relevant to those managing product returns: (1) how customers perceive the returning process and assessing the extent that these perceptions have on satisfaction with the organization, loyalty and word-of-mouth (WOM) and (2) are these outcomes moderated by whether customer returns were planned or unplanned?

The data consisted of 21 semi-structured interviews (pilot study) and a quantitative survey (n = 384; main study) targeted at consumers who had bought fashion items online.

Qualitative insights revealed that perceptions of the returning experience are driven by monetary costs, convenience, stress and guilt. Quantitative findings showed that the returning experience explains return satisfaction for both planned and unplanned returners, and returning satisfaction explains overall satisfaction and WOM. The noteworthy difference concerns loyalty: although customers that planned to return items are more loyal to the organization, it is the unplanned returners whose loyalty can be significantly increased by better managing the returning process.

Returning products online is increasingly common and thus forms an important part of the customer's overall experience with an organization. Returns management can therefore drive key customer outcomes. Understanding the dynamics between the product return experience, return satisfaction and customer outcomes will help practitioners design and implement more informed returns management strategies. Measures are also presented that assess the cognitive and emotional aspects associated with returning products.

Returning products is an increasingly important challenge for online retailers. Understanding what kinds of returning behaviors occur allows companies to design and execute better informed decisions to manage this phenomenon, not only for the sake of firm performance but also for societal and environmental benefits – the triple bottom line.

While scholars have investigated the relationship between return policies (e.g. free vs fee) and profitability, no prior literature has examined the returning experience: how consumers perceive the returning process; motivations for their returns (whether returns were planned or not) and subsequent customer outcomes.

This paper examines why ordinary people engage in aberrant consumer behavior (ACB), and pays particular attention to the extent to which consumer perceptions of corporate ‘unfairness’ lead to a response in kind. The study examines five ethical scenarios including insurance claim exaggeration and software piracy, using data from 344 UK consumers. Ajzen's theory of planned behavior (TPB) provides an initial analytical framework. The study also adopts an additional variable, perceived unfairness, referring to the extent to which an actor is motivated to redress an imbalance perceived as unfair.

In comparison to TPB, the study reveals different components of ACB. Furthermore, analysis of variance indicates that consumer perceptions of unfairness by insurance companies provide a significant reason for claim exaggeration. This suggests that ACB is one form of market response to unfair corporate performance. Thus it is argued that an examination of ACB will not only help to understand which ethical aspects of corporate performance might be perceived as unfair, but also to evaluate the extent to which it contributes to a negative perception of particular industries and corporations. The closing discussion considers how a consumer negative response to corporate performance might relate to pricing, product attributes and customer relationships.

The main purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of consumer behaviour with respect to (r)e‐tail borrowing, performed under different (more or less generous) delivery and return policies.

The study was designed as a randomised controlled experiment with a random sample strategy. Among the 192,482 Swedish customers who had made an order at nelly.com during the previous 12 months and were to receive the quarterly nelly.com newsletter in November 2010 by e‐mail, 4,000 were randomly selected and randomised into four groups of 1,000 in each group.

The experiment revealed certain purchase and return patterns that support the conclusion that (r)e‐tail borrowing behaviour exists in fashion e‐commerce. Evidence was also found that lenient delivery and returns policies seem to reinforce (r)e‐tail borrowing behaviour, albeit not always in expected ways.

Differences in delivery and return policies seem to impact consumer purchase and return behaviour differently depending on the type of item. Therefore a more differentiated view of how to apply them is suggested. Offering the same delivery and return policies to all types of customers and products is generally not optimal with respect to profitability.

The paper illustrates the need to consider both delivery and returns policies together with customer and product categories simultaneously when applying them in an e‐commerce context.

This study aims to investigate investing and borrowing behavior in retail banking between ethnic groups, specifically the Caucasians vis‐à‐vis the Chinese.

A total sample of 645 Caucasians and Chinese in Australia, Canada and China were tested for their level of business assigned to their main banks, defined as share of wallet (SOW) in this study. The study applied multivariate analyses.

No significant differences were found between the ethnic Chinese in Australia and Canada in comparison to their counterparts in mainland China, or compared with the Caucasians in Australia and Canada. This finding of convergence suggests that ethnic Chinese have adapted to the local banking behavior. The ethnic Chinese in Australia and Canada assigned 81‐88 percent of their assets to their main banks, in comparison to only 72 percent for their counterparts in China and 73 percent for the Caucasians. As such, the ethnic Chinese in Australia and Canada have developed their own unique behavior, resulting in crossvergence: an over‐adaptation to local behavior in managing their assets, and a mid‐way approach between the Chinese in China and the local Caucasians when it comes to borrowing money.

For bank marketing managers, this form of crossvergence constitutes a challenge as it suggests that gaining the trust of Chinese customers is complex since the SOW is lowest in the booming emerging market (i.e. China) whereas ethnic Chinese consumers in Western markets have formed their own unique pattern of allocating business to their banks. “Ethnic banking” is suggested to offer tailored services to ethnic groups in order to satisfy their specific money management.

This study establishes that Chinese consumers in Western markets are a distinct consumer group. Products and services need to be specially customized to suit their wants and needs.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how an industrial retailer used a small‐scale study to explore the importance of retail atmospherics in non‐consumer retailing and made a considerable contribution to its success. It focuses on the importance of interior and point of purchase retail atmospherics as a sales tool in industrial retailing. It also explores the relevance of previous research findings on atmospherics in business‐to‐consumer (B2C) retail outlets to the business‐to‐business (B2B) environment.

The research was carried out using a quantitative questionnaire method using closed questions in a face‐to‐face interaction with respondents in the case study company's best‐performing B2B retail outlet.

The findings indicate that atmospherics are relevant to B2B retailing, although there are differences in the levels of importance attached to various atmospheric elements. Also, the level of importance of the elements varies with trade customers depending on whether they are participating in a planned purchase, an alternative/substitute purchase (when the planned purchase is not possible), or an impulse purchase.

Consumer retailing atmospherics has been subject to considerable examination and proved to be influential in maximising the potential sales of stores. However, industrial (B2B) retailing has been generally overlooked by academic studies. This study not only explores industrial retail buying, but indicates that B2C findings are transferable to some degree and may contribute to improved performance.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize and provide excerpts from a two‐day roundtable on securities lending and short selling hosted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on September 29‐30, 2009.

The paper provides summaries and participants' comments from two days of SEC commissioner's questions and panel discussions. Day one – securities lending: Panel 1 – overview of securities lending; Panel 2 – securities lending and investor protection concerns; Panel 3 – improving securities lending for the benefit of investors; Panel 4: the future of securities lending and potential regulatory solutions. Day two – short selling: Panel 1 – controls on “naked” short selling; Panel 2: making short sale disclosure more meaningful.

Many pension and mutual funds view securities lending as an investment activity. Securities lenders see cash collateral as an important risk. FINRA and the SEC have considered the need for increased transparency and the possible benefits of a central counterparty for securities lending. The securities lending market is highly regulated, including through requirements imposed by Regulation T, 15c3‐3, 15c3‐1, Regulation SHO, and ERISA guidelines. The SEC has considered “hard locate” and “pre‐borrow” requirements for short sales, which some market participants believe would be uneconomical. An estimated 50 percent of fails are from ETFs. The SEC has considered enhanced disclosure requirements for short sales, both anonymous and public, their possible effects on fraud prevention and market efficiency, and any harm they could do to market makers.

The paper provides a discussion by regulators and industry experts on the most important current regulatory issues related to securities lending and short selling.