Managing Product Returns Within the Customer Value Framework

Customers can create value to the firm by purchasing products, not returning these products, recommending products to other potential customers, influencing other customers, and providing feedback to the company. In this chapter, we first discuss how product returns and engagement behaviors can be included in the customer value framework. Second, we discuss the antecedents of a customer’s product return decision, namely, return policies, information at the moment of purchase, and customer and product characteristics. Third, we focus on the consequences of product returns: the effects on future purchase and product return behavior, as well as on customer engagement behaviors. Thus, this chapter provides a comprehensive synthesis of current knowledge on antecedents and consequences of product returns and how this relates to measuring and managing customer value

Customer emotions in service failure and recovery encounters

Emotions play a significant role in the workplace, and considerable attention has been given to the study of employee emotions. Customers also play a central function in organizations, but much less is known about customer emotions. This chapter reviews the growing literature on customer emotions in employee–customer interfaces with a focus on service failure and recovery encounters, where emotions are heightened. It highlights emerging themes and key findings, addresses the measurement, modeling, and management of customer emotions, and identifies future research streams. Attention is given to emotional contagion, relationships between affective and cognitive processes, customer anger, customer rage, and individual differences

Affective responses to service failure: Anger, regret, and retaliatory versus conciliatory responses

After a service failure, consumers make appraisals or assessments about the characteristics of this failure. These appraisals, in turn, affect how a consumer responds emotionally and behaviorally. Using an appraisal-tendency framework, we predict that two negatively valenced emotions (anger and regret) underlie or mediate the effects of consumers’ appraisals about service failure on post-purchase behaviors. Consistent with the predictions, in a laboratory study, we find that anger plays a powerful role in explaining retaliatory behaviors, and that both anger and regret account for the effect of appraisals on conciliatory behaviors. We extend the same appraisal-tendency framework to predict how changes in emotions underlie the effects of recovery efforts on post-purchase behaviors. Again consistent with predictions, in the laboratory study and in a web-based study, we find that recovery efforts that reduce anger decrease retaliatory behaviors. However, both studies provide less clear-cut evidence about the emotional mediators between recovery efforts and conciliatory behaviors. Because conciliatory behaviors are important behaviors for businesses to promote, future research should explore what other emotions explain recovery effort effects on conciliatory behaviors. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007Post-purchase, Anger, Regret, Recovery,