Factors affecting customer intention to return in online shopping: the roles of expectation disconfirmation and post-purchase dissonance

This study integrates expectation disconfirmation theory and cognitive dissonance theory into a model to explain why individual customers choose to return purchased products. The study uses survey results to test the impact of negative expectation disconfirmation and post-purchase dissonance on consumers’ return intention and confirm that they work as dual mechanisms to independently predict customers’ product returns; importantly, the research emphasizes the multidimensionality of post-purchase dissonance (i.e., cognitive and emotional dissonance) and their joint impact on customers’ intention to return. Moreover, the current study explores the impact of a large group of factors, including online reviews, product-related factors, and shopper-related factors on product returns through the dual mechanisms. Regarding online review factors, the results highlight the critical roles of aggregated indicators (i.e., review consistency) and individual review content (i.e., emotions expressed in reviews) in affecting customers’ return intention, through the mediation of cognitive dissonance and emotional dissonance. Significant effects are also identified between product-related factors (e.g., price) and negative expectation disconfirmation, and between shopper-related factors (e.g., income) and post-purchase dissonance. theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed.