Book Description

Cross-border e-commerce shopping is becoming quite common, and people are gradually accepting the trend of shifting from offline to online shopping. Most cross-border e-commerce firms have abandoned the previous profit-centrist value chain in favor of a more customercentrist orientation. Many e-commerce firms are actively establishing lenient return policies to improve their consumers' shopping experiences and match their expectations. The development of return policies helps in the expansion of online shopping while ensuring consumers' legitimate rights. Unlike traditional shopping methods, online transactions are characterized by asymmetric information between two parties. It is usual for consumers to be suspicious of unknown online shopping sites. Returns for online purchases can occur for various reasons, including quality issues. For example, even if the product's quality is acceptable, returns could happen if the consumer's perception of the product's value after purchase differs from the evaluation of the product before purchase. Retailers hope that lenient return policies will reduce consumer complaints while showing confidence in their products. Consumers often perceive a lenient returns policy as a signal. Consumers will predict the goods based on the signaling that the higher the quality of the product, the less likely it is to be returned. Retailers can thus encourage return behaviour even if they know their customers are happy with their products and do not wish to return them. On the other hand, consumers perceive a strict return policy as a signal of high risk and lack of credibility. From the retailer's perspective, a lenient policy can also lead to unethical returns by consumers, increasing the rate of returns and the cost of secondary sales. Therefore, return policies remain a hot topic in studying consumer-retailer relationships. This study is based on a literature review of previous research on return policies, with SHEIN serving as a case study. Moreover, the model in this study would use signalizing theory and SOR theory, with perceived fairness as the mediating variable and customer participation as the moderating variable, to determine the impact of a lenient return policy on consumer purchase intention. The questionnaire was then created using online questionnaire software- Wenjuanxin, and respondents completed it online via a QR code link to collect questionnaire data. The 500 collected questionnaires were analyzed with SPSS23.0 and AMOS23.0 for demographic analysis, reliability and validity analysis, correlation analysis, regression analysis, and SEM structural equation modeling to make conclusions. The results show that lenient return policies in the cross-border e-commerce retail industry positively influence perceived fairness. Perceived fairness has a significant positive impact on consumers' purchase intentions. Perceived fairness mediates significantly and partially between lenient returns and consumers' purchase intentions, and information sharing and interpersonal interactions in customer participation moderate lenient return policies and perceived fairness. Finally, this study summarizes the results of the analysis. The findings suggest directions for SHEIN that can be improved, which will help the company in the future. In terms of future research directions, aspects of the returns policy are suggested that could be carried out in-depth in the future. Several shortcomings of this study were listed at the end.