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Retailer’s rationale to refuse consumer returns in supply chains. (English) Zbl 1411.90182

Summary: While accepting consumer returns has long been proposed as a solution to resolve the consumer valuation uncertainty problem, there are still a sizable portion of retailers who insist on a “no return” policy. In this article, we offer an economic rationale for these seemingly unreasonable strategies in a supply chain context. We demonstrate when and why the retailer may benefit from refusing consumer returns, even though offering consumer returns allows the supply chain to implement the expostmarket segmentation. Granting the retailer the right to refuse consumer returns may sometimes improve supply chain efficiency: it eliminates the manufacturer’s attempt to induce inefficient consumer returns and bring the equilibrium back to that in the vertically integrated benchmark. We also find that the refund and the retail price can move in the opposite directions when product reliability varies, and consumer returns have a nontrivial impact on the quality choice.

MSC:

90B50 Management decision making, including multiple objectives
90B05 Inventory, storage, reservoirs
91B42 Consumer behavior, demand theory
Full Text: DOI

References:

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