Return Policies In Omnichannel Operations With Opportunistic Consumers

This paper studies the specific return decisions and optimal strategy of an omnichannel firm who provide full return,online partial return and offline partial return.Consumers can return unsatisfied items to the firm according to the firm’s return policy.However,such generous return policy can not only bring good effects,but also produce some bad results,such as opportunistic return,which refers to the behavior of consumers who buy goods intentionally only for short-term use and then return them.Based on this,we divides consumers into two types:honest consumer and opportunistic consumer.In omni-channel context,consumers can purchase goods through two channels,and allow goods purchased online to be returned across channels.This paper gives the optimal sale prices and refund of different channels to analyze the profit of the firm.Finally,it is found that the firm should consider partial refund strategy unless the full refund can positively stimulate the demand,and the proportion of online consumer is relatively small or the firm have good online salvage ability.There is a big difference in the firm’s ability to salvage goods in different channels,consumers’ extra purchasing ability in stores is weak,and it is troublesome to return goods in physical stores,online partial refund strategy should be adopted.If the gap between the firm’s ability to salvage goods from different channels is small and the physical store is very convenient to return goods,the firm will obtain additional profits due to honest consumer coming to the store,which can bridge the small gap between offline and online salvage ability.Therefore,the company can charge a high online return fee,so that consumers can choose to return goods offline.Finally,this paper also finds that the firm can make offline returns more convenient to increase profits,but it should be cautious in increasing store visits and reducing the proportion of renters.