Product return service and customer repurchase on the B2B platforms: The contingent roles of logistics capability and competition intensity

Managing product return services on B2B e-commerce platforms presents a double-edged sword for manufacturers seeking to encourage customer repurchase. While a generous return service can enhance customer repurchase by safeguarding customer interests and improving customer perceived benefits, it may simultaneously deter repurchase by elevating customer perceived sacrifices, such as cost pass-through. Despite the strategic importance of this trade-off, the relationship between product return service and customer repurchase remains underexplored. Drawing upon the customer perceived value view, this study theorizes an inverted U-shaped relationship between the level of product return service and customer repurchase. It further posits that this curvilinear relationship is attenuated by the manufacturer's logistics capability and competition intensity. Analyzing a dataset of 4956 manufacturer-week observations on the 1688 platform from December 2022 to June 2023, this study finds strong support for these hypotheses. This research contributes to the B2B e-commerce literature by uncovering an inverted U-shaped relationship between product return service and customer repurchase and specifying its boundary conditions. The findings offer managers actionable insights into strategically calibrating their return service levels to maximize customer repurchase, accounting for their logistics capabilities and competitive environment.