| The transaction scale of China's online market keeps growing,with the increase of the consumption power of Chinese residents and the gradual cultivation of online shopping habits.According to the monitoring data of the E-Commerce Research Center,the domestic online retail market reached more than 4 trillion yuan in the first half of 2018 and online shopping has been a part of people's daily life.There are a lot of literatures studying the influencing factors of online purchasing behaviors,but few articles studying online return and return behaviors.In the bricks-and-mortar stores in China,returning goods is not very common because there is no legal provision to return goods with no reason even today and returning is never an easy thing.When consumers buy fake and shoddy products,it is often difficult to get happy replacement or return services.After the vigorous development of e-commerce,the revised version of the consumer rights protection law(article 25)in 2014,clearly stipulates that online consumers can enjoy a 7-day return service without any reason.In recent years,with the launch of return cargo insurance,online consumers are really experiencing worry-free online shopping and happy return services.This lenient return policy on one hand mitigates people's risk of online purchasing,on the other,stipulates the soaring of online return rates.For years,e-return rate has been a business secret,major Chinese e-commerce platforms have been tight-lipped about it.People can only Speculate it from the annual Online Shopping Festival,the Singles' day which creates two major crazes,one is the shopping and the other is the return craze after the Singles' day.According to foreign media,product returns are a terrible black hole in retailing,and e-tailers are even worse than bricks-and-mortar stores.The lenient return policy,in addition,has provoked some opportunists to take advantage of the loopholes to commit unethical behaviors.An article in Beijing Youth Daily in May 2019 titled "women buy 18 pieces of clothes on taobao.com and return them after traveling" exposed one tip of the iceberg of Chinese online shopping opportunistic phenomena.This report reflects that the threshold for return in China's e-market,on the one hand,is continuous lowering such that product return has gradually become a social norm widely accepted by retailers and consumers;the unethical return behaviors,on the other hand,also become pervasive and arouse much social attention.These unethical returns including malicious return,e-tail renting and multiple-mode return cause a great deal of controversy.Some of the online “try-on clan” treat the online retailers as their private “wardrobe” and enjoy the free experience of the products.Their shopping purpose is not to own the product but merely to make use of the liberal return policy.For example,they may dress the online purchased clothes to take holiday photos,and return them after traveling.These phenomena often occur in the area of clothing,cosmetics,jewelry,electronics and some luxury products.Another pervasive phenomenon in recent years is the “online multiple-mode return”,in which some consumers deliberately order products of various models and colors for the sake of comparing and disposing of the unsatisfied ones.The assessment of this kind of product return behavior may be very disputable and people from different countries will have different opinions.According to the previous literature,it may be classified as a purposeful,immoral or opportunistic behavior.However,in the developed markets like the U.S.with the fierce competition,some companies use lenient return policy as a kind of marketing strategy to attract customers which leave the impression on some customers that their return behaviors are,in fact,spoiled by the seller.In China,there is still a great debate over whether this kind of behavior is opportunistic or not.The lenient return policy,after all,was only implemented in recent years and the return terms in China are also different from the U.S.,China's online return period covers only one week and there are a lot of restrictive conditions attached to the no-reason return policies in the implementation process.The biggest difference,however,lies in fact that the statutory application of no-reason return policy is only confined in e-commerce environment while many offline stores still follow the previous strict return policy.Due to the above reasons,literatures on the phenomena of return in China's retail sector are far and few between and it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive and in-depth study on such phenomena in China's e-commerce sector.What are the reasons that cause online return? What are consumers' intrinsic motivations that drive their returns? What are the major reasons that lead to soaring of return rate in spite of the improvement of the products quality year by year? What are consumers' orientations that lead to return? What is the mechanism that affects the normal return behavior and what is the mechanism that affects opportunistic returns?Based on such research ideas,we first searched for records of consumers' return intention from online reviews and collected reviews on buyers' return behaviors from the sellers' community of Taobao to form an outline of interview,then conducted in-depth interviews with 3 online vendors and 19 shoppers who have return experiences.Through applying the grounded theory method,we summarized from the interview documents two major factors(subjective and objective),five intrinsic motivations(e.g.the psychological contract breach,expectation-disconfirmation,post-purchase dissonance,thrill-seeking needs and ethical orientation)and seven online return behaviors(e.g.“forced”,“Deceived”,“repentant”,“disappointed”,“fraudulent”,“rental” and “multi-mode” return).In addition,the seven return behaviors were further classified as legitimate and opportunistic return behaviors,and justified by student subjects from an ethical perspective in a 7 return-scenario experiments.We also construct a legitimate return behavior model and an opportunistic behavior model respectively.The mechanism that affects the legitimate return behavior is the post-purchase dissonance caused by consumers' perceived violations of psychological contracts and inconsistent expectations.In the customer-centered market environment,customers increasingly regard return as an ethical and feasible reduction measure of post-purchase dissonance and shopping Risk,and dissonance reduction thus are the main reason for the increase in online returns.According to our qualitative analysis,the four dimensions of psychological contract breach in e-commerce are perceived trust violation,perceived responsibility violation,perceived commitment violation and perceived fairness violation.Empirical study found that effects of all dimensions of psychological contract breach on the post-purchase dissonance were supported except for the dimension of perceived commitment violation.The findings also shows that Product dissonance does not directly but indirectly lead to return behavior through emotional dissonance while emotional dissonance does directly result in return behavior;meanwhile,our research also finds that the moderating effect of return costs between consumers' post-purchase dissonance and returns is not significant,indicating that return cost factors have little effect on consumers' online return behavior,especially after the introduction of return shipping insurance.In order to enhance consumers' online shopping experience,both vendors and platforms basically will meet their customers' satisfaction so long as their return intentions are reasonable.The mechanism that affects the opportunistic return behavior is consumers' subject norm,perceived behavior control and opportunistic return attitudes,and the planned behavior theory can fully explain opportunistic return behavior.Under the lenient return policy,opportunists speculate on free sampling products and then return them on purpose.The formation of opportunistic return attitude is related to consumers' ethical orientation and personality of thrill-seeking needs.Idealistic people stick to moral absolutism when making moral decisions,they will not do harm to others and reject non-ethical behaviors.Relativists,on the contrary,value on the outcome and argue that there is no absolute moral code and that everything depends on the situation.Our empirical research shows the assumptions that the effect of subjective norm,perceived behavior control and opportunistic return attitude on opportunistic return behaviors have all been supported;idealistic ethical orientation is negatively but not significantly correlated with opportunistic return attitude,while relativistic ethical orientation is positively correlated with opportunistic return attitude;and thrill-seeking need is also significantly correlated with opportunistic return attitude.At the same time,we further analyze the impact of demographic factors on related variables by using independent sample t-tests and analysis of variance and get the following four demographic findings: Firstly,in terms of gender factor,men's opportunistic return attitudes and behaviors are significantly higher than women's,and their subjective norm are also significantly higher than women's;however,there were no significant gender differences in consumer idealistic and relativistic ethics and in perceived behavior control and thrill-seeking needs.Secondly,In terms of age factor,consumers of different age groups have no significant differences in opportunistic return attitudes,behaviors,subjective norms and thrill-seeking needs,and no significant differences in idealistic and relativistic ethics,while the age group of “18-25”(mainly college students)is significantly lower than other age groups in perceived behavior control.Thirdly,In terms of online monthly expenses,groups with more than 1,000 yuan are significantly higher than the other groups in thrill-seeking needs;group with 5000 yuan or more is significantly higher than the other four groups in their opportunistic return attitude and return behavior;there are also significant differences between different groups in perceived behavior control,The more consumers spend online,the more control they have over perceived behavior.However,no significant differences are found in consumers' idealistic and relativistic orientation and consumers' subjective norms.Fourthly,in terms of the factor of return frequency,there was no significant difference among different groups in opportunistic return attitude,consumer ethical orientation and subjective norm,but the “frequent” return group were significantly higher than those of the “very few” group in the opportunistic return behaviors;the "never" group is significantly lower than the “very few” and “occasionally” groups in perceived behavioral control.Basing on the research conclusions,we propose the following three countermeasures for reducing the online return behaviors: e-tailing companies should provide customers with lifetime delivered value;they should create better interactive communication channels;e-commerce platforms should manage their customer relationship and establish integrity and punishment mechanisms to deter dishonest behaviors of online vendors and consumers by using their big data base.The major innovations of this paper lie in:Firstly,basing on the qualitative research of psychological contract breach in e-commerce,we further refine the dimensions of transactional psychological contract breach into perceived responsibility breach,perceived commitment breach and perceived fairness breach,and redefine relational dimension as perceived trust breach dimension,and develop relevant measurement scales basing on the e-commerce environment.Secondly,through exploring customers' orientation toward return behaviors by using the grounded theory,we identified seven types of online return behaviors: the forced returner;the deceived returner;the repentant returner;the disappointed returner;the fraudulent returner;the rental returner and the multi-mode returner and they were further classified into legitimate and opportunistic types.We also summarized five types of intrinsic motivations that drive such kinds of return behaviors: perceived psychological contract breach,expectation-disconfirmation,post-purchase dissonance,thrill-seeking needs and ethical orientation.This is so far the most comprehensive summary of the e-commerce return behaviors.Thirdly,we reach the conclusion that the reason why the return rate rises is not because of the decline in product quality,but because today's consumers increasingly regard return as an important means to reduce post-purchase dissonance.The theory of cognitive dissonance was proposed in the less competitive era when consumer rights protection movements were not so common.The reason that consumers in that era did not choose to return when they suffered dissonance is because they have lower confidence in successful returns.When individuals lack confidence in achieving the expected results,they are more likely to restore psychological balance by changing their cognitive components.However,over the past 50 years,the market environment,including competition,consumer protection regulations,and grassroots consumer movements,has undergone tremendous changes,which has led to a completely different operating environment from the 1960 s and 1970 s.Especially after the emergence of the e-commerce,fierce competition has forced companies to provide more service benefits,including liberate product return policies to improve their performance.Consumers today don't feel the need to justify their wrong purchases,nor do they feel the need to keep the product.They are more likely to respond to post-purchase dissonance through product return,and product return as a social norm is also widely accepted in the current market,Fourthly,basing on the theory of planned behavior,we constructed the mechanism model of opportunistic return behavior,and verify that it has something to do with consumers' opportunistic attitudes,perceived behavior control and subjective norm;and the formulation of opportunistic attitude is related to consumers' personal ethics and trill-seeking personality.At the same time,opportunistic return behavior is related to demographic factors. |
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