Consumers' Legitimate and Opportunistic Product Return Behaviors in Online Shopping

Author: 

Zhi Pei
Audhesh Paswan

Abstract: 

This research focuses on understanding consumers’ online return behaviors. We empirically differentiate consumers’ return behaviors into two broad categories - legitimate return behaviors and opportunistic return behaviors and find that some factors such as impulsiveness, desire for uniqueness, product compatibility, perceived risk and social influence contribute to leading to legitimate return behaviors, while some factors such as immorality, selfmonitoring, and social influence resulting opportunistic return behaviors. In addition, the results suggest that legitimate return behaviors can increase consumers’ repatronage intention, however, opportunistic return behaviors reduce consumers’ repatronage intention. Our study contributes to the theoretical understanding of online consumers’ complex return behaviors and thus adds depth to the literature of product returns. Also, by identifying the drivers of product return behaviors, this study is able to help e-tailers reduce product returns and thus increase their profits.

Key Word: 

Published Date: 

November, 2018

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