IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/canjec/v40y2007i1p296-316.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Return policies, market outcomes, and consumer welfare

Author

Listed:
  • Tatyana Chesnokova

Abstract

. The effect of return policies on market outcomes is studied in a model where consumers differ in their valuations of time. Product reliability is identified with defect rates. Producers first choose reliability levels and then compete in prices. For given defect rates, allowing returns makes products closer substitutes, enhancing competition and reducing prices. Being closer substitutes makes higher reliability less worthwhile, which reduces reliability. While the decrease in reliability reduces consumer welfare, the decrease in prices raises it. The latter dominates, so that aggregate consumer welfare increases with return policy. L'effet des politiques de remboursement sur les résultats du marché est examiné dans le cadre d'un modèle où les consommateurs ont des évaluations différentes de la valeur de leur temps. La fiabilité des produits est mesurée par leur taux de défectuosité. Les producteurs choisissent d'abord des niveaux de fiabilité, et ensuite se concurrencent par les prix. Pour des niveaux de défectuosité donnés, permettre de retourner le produit rend les produits davantage des substituts, accroît la concurrence, et réduit les prix. Une plus grande substituabilité rend la fiabilité moins importante, et donc réduit la fiabilité. Alors que la chute de la fiabilité réduit le bien‐être du consommateur, la chute des prix l'accroît. Ce second effet domine, ce qui fait que le bien‐être agrégé du consommateur s'accroît quand il y a politique de remboursement.

Suggested Citation

  • Tatyana Chesnokova, 2007. "Return policies, market outcomes, and consumer welfare," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(1), pages 296-316, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:canjec:v:40:y:2007:i:1:p:296-316
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.00409.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.00409.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.00409.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Matthews, Steven & Moore, John, 1987. "Monopoly Provision of Quality and Warranties: An Exploration in the Theory of Multidimensional Screening," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(2), pages 441-467, March.
    2. Che, Yeon-Koo, 1996. "Customer Return Policies for Experience Goods," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(1), pages 17-24, March.
    3. Grossman, Sanford J, 1981. "The Informational Role of Warranties and Private Disclosure about Product Quality," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(3), pages 461-483, December.
    4. Russell Cooper & Thomas W. Ross, 1985. "Product Warranties and Double Moral Hazard," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 16(1), pages 103-113, Spring.
    5. Avner Shaked & John Sutton, 1982. "Relaxing Price Competition Through Product Differentiation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 49(1), pages 3-13.
    6. Philip H. Dybvig & Nancy A. Lutz, 1993. "Warranties, Durability, and Maintenance: Two-sided Moral Hazard in a Continuous-Time Model," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(3), pages 575-597.
    7. Emons, Winand, 1988. "Warranties, moral hazard, and the lemons problem," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 16-33, October.
    8. Avishay Braverman & J. Luis Guasch & Steven Salop, 1983. "Defects in Disneyland: Quality Control as a Two-Part Tariff," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 50(1), pages 121-131.
    9. Jean Tirole, 1988. "The Theory of Industrial Organization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262200716, December.
    10. Jaskold Gabszewicz, J. & Thisse, J. -F., 1980. "Entry (and exit) in a differentiated industry," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 327-338, April.
    11. Jaskold Gabszewicz, J. & Thisse, J. -F., 1979. "Price competition, quality and income disparities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 340-359, June.
    12. Michael Spence, 1977. "Consumer Misperceptions, Product Failure and Producer Liability," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 44(3), pages 561-572.
    13. Kelvin J. Lancaster, 1966. "A New Approach to Consumer Theory," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74(2), pages 132-132.
    14. Nancy A. Lutz, 1989. "Warranties as Signals under Consumer Moral Hazard," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 20(2), pages 239-255, Summer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pei, Zhi & Paswan, Audhesh & Yan, Ruiliang, 2014. "E-tailer׳s return policy, consumer׳s perception of return policy fairness and purchase intention," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 249-257.
    2. Yan, Ruiliang & Pei, Zhi, 2019. "Return policies and O2O coordination in the e-tailing age," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 314-321.
    3. Dmitry Lubensky & Eric Schmidbauer, 2020. "Free Product Trials: Disclosing Quality And Match Value," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(4), pages 1565-1576, October.
    4. Joaquín Coleff, 2020. "Can consumer complaints reduce product reliability? Should we worry?," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 74-96, January.
    5. Kim, Junyong & Wansink, Brian, 2012. "How Retailers’ Recommendation and Return Policies Alter Product Evaluations," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 88(4), pages 528-541.
    6. Matsui, Kenji, 2010. "Returns policy, new model introduction, and consumer welfare," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(2), pages 299-309, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Junhong Chu & Pradeep K. Chintagunta, 2009. "Quantifying the Economic Value of Warranties in the U.S. Server Market," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(1), pages 99-121, 01-02.
    2. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899, January.
    3. Aidan Hollis, 1996. "Exclusivity Restrictions in Markets with Adverse Selection: The Case of Extended Warranties," Working Papers ecpap-96-03, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    4. Shiou Shieh, 1996. "Price and Money‐Back Guarantees as Signals of Product Quality," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(3), pages 361-377, September.
    5. D Vandegrift, 2001. "Quality‐Assuring Price And Breach Of Express Or Implied Warranty," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 19(2), pages 186-196, April.
    6. Alena Podaneva & Pierre Picard, 2023. "Facility Management Services in UK Hospitals: in-house or outsourcing," DEM Discussion Paper Series 23-15, Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg.
    7. Philip H. Dybvig & Nancy A. Lutz, 1993. "Warranties, Durability, and Maintenance: Two-sided Moral Hazard in a Continuous-Time Model," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(3), pages 575-597.
    8. McClure, James & Kumcu, Erdogan, 2008. "Promotions and product pricing: Parsimony versus Veblenesque demand," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 105-117, January.
    9. Padmanabhan, V, 1995. "Usage Heterogeneity and Extended Warranties," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4(1), pages 33-53, Spring.
    10. David Hakes & Dongsoo Shin, 2008. "Warranties as a device to extract rent from low-risk users of a product," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(1), pages 1-7.
    11. Lutz, Nancy A. & Padmanabhan, V., 1998. "Warranties, extended warranties, and product quality," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 463-493, July.
    12. Corchón Luis Carlos & Zudenkova Galina, 2013. "The Welfare Effects of Location and Quality in Oligopoly," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 1143-1178, July.
    13. Moresi, Serge & Schwartz, Marius, 2023. "Product innovation with vertical differentiation: Is a monopolist's incentive weaker?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    14. Roy, Malabika, 2006. "Effect of subsidy and entry into the informal sector with interlinkage," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 383-397.
    15. Dieter Pennerstorfer & Nora Schindler & Christoph Weiss & Biliana Yontcheva, 2020. "Income Inequality and Product Variety: Empirical Evidence," Economics working papers 2020-17, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    16. Ngo Van Long & Zhuang Miao, 2020. "Multiple‐quality Cournot oligopoly and the role of market size," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 932-952, October.
    17. Peter-J. Jost, 2023. "Price commitment and the strategic launch of a fighter brand," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 381-435, September.
    18. Sawoong Kang, 2006. "Return Policy as a Signaling Device in Horizontally Differentiated Products," Korean Economic Review, Korean Economic Association, vol. 22, pages 409-436.
    19. Jianhua Ma & Xingzheng Ai & Wen Yang & Yanchun Pan, 2019. "Decentralization versus coordination in competing supply chains under retailers’ extended warranties," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 275(2), pages 485-510, April.
    20. Steven A. Matthews & Nicola Persico, 2007. "Information Acquisition and Refunds for Returns," PIER Working Paper Archive 07-021, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:canjec:v:40:y:2007:i:1:p:296-316. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1540-5982 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.