Exploring consumer online product returning behavior : Chinese e-consumers’ perspective

Abstract

In the retail world, product returns are a common practice by consumers. Many businesses have been attempting to obtain more sales by providing customers with lenient return policies as well as customer-friendly return processes and procedures. Over the past decade, the issue of product returns by consumers is on the rise and drawing increased attention from practitioners and researchers. The objective of this thesis is to explore Chinese e-consumers’ perception of fraudulent returning behavior and identify the characteristics of Chinese consumers’ online returning behavior on fashion products, in the context of China’s thriving e-commerce market. Fashion products are the most popular items online, thus the thesis mainly focuses on fashion product returns. Mixed methods approach is employed in conducting the research. The author first conducts in-depth interviews with respondents, and then sends out an online survey. Both the qualitative and quantitative data are analyzed as to provide holistic results and findings for the thesis. Findings of this thesis provide an overview of Chinese consumers’ fashion product return motives, product return rates, demographical characteristics, and their attitudes towards fraudulent returning behavior. The theory of planned behavior proves to be suitable to explain the findings of this thesis and subsequently sheds light on the uniqueness of China’s online retail environment. Chinese online consumers are more critical of fraudulent returning behavior therefore the findings do not consider fraudulent returns as a problematic issue in China.