Managers' reactions to return requests and e-consumer expectations: An exploratory study

Abstract

E-commerce in Morocco has undergone a major evolution. Businesses continue to digitize, and "think digital" has radically transformed the relationship with the customer. Today's hyper-connected, autonomy-loving, novelty-loving customer seems to enjoy the digitalization of products and distribution channels. This has enabled them to take advantage of a pleasant environment, in line with their tastes and ubiquity.

However, even with improved digital performance and technical reliability, we conclude that digitalization and all these innovations have no control over consumer dissatisfaction, because there will always be a dissatisfied customer somewhere, and products will always be returned.

In this article, we will explore, through a qualitative study, the cyberconsumer's main expectations of the returns management service, and the reactions of return managers to requests for returns.

Interviews were conducted with online consumers from different professional categories who had experienced returns, and with returns managers operating in different business sectors. The total number of interviewees was 20 (10 e-consumers and 10 return managers). To analyze the content of the data collected, we opted for manual processing. In this sense, we used thematic content analysis, as the themes were defined in advance.

Keywords : Cyberconsumers; returns; qualitative study; expectations; quality of returns service.

JEL Classification : M21, L81, L86

Paper type : Empirical research.