Remanufactured Products in Closed‐Loop Supply Chains for Consumer Goods

Abstract

T his study empirically investigates consumer perceptions of remanufactured consumer products in closed-loop supply chains. A multi-study approach led to increasing levels of measure refinement and facilitated examination of various assumptions researchers have made about the consumer market for remanufactured products. Based in part on the measure building studies, an experimental study examined remanufactured product perceptions from a national panel of consumers. The consumers responded to remanufactured product descriptions that manipulated price discount and brand equity. The results indicate that discounting had a consistently positive, linear effect on remanufactured product attractiveness. Curiously, the brand equity manipulation proved less important to consumers than specific remanufactured product quality perceptions. The results also show that green consumers and consumers who consider remanufactured products green typically found remanufactured products significantly more attractive. Finally, the findings introduce the concept of negative attribute perceptions, such as disgust, that had a significantly detrimental effect on remanufactured product attractiveness.

Perceived quality of remanufactured products: construct and measure development

“…consumers, remanufacturers, and retailers) do not typically perceive such equality and therefore adjust their behaviors accordingly (Hazen, Cegielski, & Hanna, 2011;Hazen, Wu, Cegielski, Jones-Farmer, & Hall, 2012;Wang, Wiegerinck, Krikke, & Zhang, 2013). Research in this area finds that perceived M A N U S C R I P T A C C E P T E D ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 3 quality is a salient predictor of CLSC actors' attitudes and behaviors with regard to remanufactured products (Abbey, Meloy, Guide Jr, & Atalay, 2015;Hazen, Overstreet, JonesFarmer, & Feild, 2012;Lin & Tseng, 2016). Unfortunately, the perceived quality of remanufactured products (PQRP) construct has not been adequately conceptualized, defined, or standardized in remanufacturing literature or practice.…”

“…Thus, additional investigation into communicating quality considerations across the CLSC is needed. In fact, there have been a number of recent calls for research to investigate consumer markets and perception of remanufactured products with regard to their impact on the CLSC (Abbey et al, 2015;Agrawal, Atasu, & van Ittersum, 2015;Jimenez-Parra, Rubio, & Vicente-Molina, 2014;Pang, Casalin, Papagiannidis, Muyldermans, & Kei Tse, 2015). Guide and Van Wassenhove (2009) further stress the need for empirical research and assert that research has only now begun to investigate the market-related issues surrounding remanufacturing efforts.…”

Consumer product knowledge and intention to purchase remanufactured products

“…Although benefits surrounding remanufactured products have attracted much attention from both industry and the media, consumers remain generally unreceptive toward the consumption of remanufactured goods (Chen, 2011;Chinese Economic Herald Newspaper, 2015) in part due to perceptions of low quality and other undesirable attributes (Abbey et al, 2015;Hazen et al, 2012a;Tseng et al, 2015b). Considering that the profitability of the entire closed-loop supply chain is contingent upon adequate consumer adoption of remanufactured goods (Guide and Van Wassenhove, 2009), it is important to examine consumer perceptions and propensity toward participating in these closed-loop transactions.…”

The Effect of Introducing Upgraded Remanufacturing Strategy on OEM’s Decision

“…As consumer does not view remanufactured products as perfect substitutes, the consumer with willingness-to-pay αν gets a net utility u r = αν − p r from buying a new product. α ∈ (0, 1) denotes the consumer value discount for the remanufactured product [11,13]. If u 2 > u r and u 2 > 0, consumers choose to buy new products in the second period.…”