Returns handling in e-commerce: How to avoid demand negativity in supply chain contracts with returns?

Milena Bieniek ()
Additional contact information
Milena Bieniek: Maria Curie-Sklodowska University

Electronic Commerce Research, 2025, vol. 25, issue 1, No 10, 294 pages

Abstract: Abstract E-commerce constitutes a system for the online purchase and sale of services and commodities. This theoretical article investigates the manufacturer handling strategy which occurs in online shopping, in a centralized or decentralized channel under the wholesale price contract. The retailer’s optimal order quantity, price, and the manufacturer’s wholesale price are derived assuming additive uncertainty in demand. The possibility of negative demand realizations, which may occur in adverse market circumstances, is verified in the investigated models. It was proved that the imposition of the non-negativity prerequisite on demand is vital to obtain complete results. The non-negativity constraint in this study incorporates consumer’s returns handling costs which is different than the previously used constraint. As an extension of the additive case, the model with iso-elastic demand is discussed. The theoretical analysis is enriched with numerical examples.

Keywords: Supply chain management; Returns handling; Additive demand; E-commerce (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10660-023-09689-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:elcore:v:25:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s10660-023-09689-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10660

DOI: 10.1007/s10660-023-09689-2

Access Statistics for this article

Electronic Commerce Research is currently edited by James Westland

More articles in Electronic Commerce Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().