The Impact Of E-tailer’s Return Policy On Consumer’s Purchase Intention

With the rapid development of network economy, more and more consumers begin to purchase goods online, online shopping has become an important channel for consumers. At the same time, online shopping has such feature: shopping decisions and consumer experience are separated, which resulting in a large number of return problems caused by trade disputes, restricting the rapid development of online retailing. Therefore, study and analysis the impact of online retailers return policy on consumers, has become the focus of academia attention in recent years.This study focused on the effect of online retailers return policy on consumer’s purchase intention. Specifically, based on Signal Theory, Justice Principle, PKM and S-O-R Model, this study regard Website Name Familiarity as a moderator variable, using 2(Return Policy Leniency: restricted vs. lenient) x 2(Website Name Familiarity: high vs. low) experiment, designing 4 different experimental situations, to examine the effect of return policy leniency on consumer’s perceived return policy fairness, perceived return policy believability and purchase intention. The conclusions are as follow:1. Online retailers return policy leniency has positive relationship with consumers’, perceived return policy fairness and purchase intention, negative relationship with consumers’ perceived return policy believability.2. Website Name Familiarity has a moderating effect on the relationship between return policy leniency and consumer’s purchase intention, and perceived return policy fairness, and perceived return policy believability.3. There is a mediating effect of perceived return policy fairness between return policy leniency and consumer’s purchase intention. Perceived return policy believability doesn’t has mediating effect.Finally, this study discusses the theoretical and managerial implications of the results.