Product returns management: a comprehensive review and future research agenda

Product return is a critical issue due to the uncertainty associated with the price, demand, and quality of the product. Thus, businesses must improve their information transparency to administer the product return behaviour of the end-user. Different studies so far have contributed to developing solutions to manage product return issues. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the literature on the product returns management domain to provide the scientific landscape map of existing studies for exploring the state of the current body of knowledge. A systematic literature review of existing literature, quantitative bibliometric analysis, and in-depth content analysis are conducted to accomplish the purpose. A total of 518 published articles from January 1986 to November 2020 are selected, reviewed, classified, and analysed in this study. We classified papers into six identified PRM categories, namely product recovery, forecasting product returns, consumer behaviour, return policy, uncertainty, and technology. Finally, we blended the state-of-the-art research and outlined the future research agenda concerning various themes, methodologies used, and aspects like lean, agility, and disruption in PRM based on research gap analysis.

Automated summary

Product return is a critical issue due to uncertainties in price, demand, and quality. Businesses need to enhance information transparency to manage end-user product return behavior. This paper reviews literature on product returns management, conducts systematic literature review, quantitative bibliometric analysis, and in-depth content analysis to provide a comprehensive overview of existing studies and outline future research agenda.