The influence of e-services on customer online purchasing behavior toward remanufactured products

Abstract

Remarketing and reselling remanufactured electronic products is one of the effective and sustainable approaches to deal with the rapidly increasing e-waste. Studying customer purchasing intention and behavior toward remanufactured products can help businesses better understand customers’ needs and improve closed-loop supply chain performance. Via an empirical study based on new, manufacturer remanufactured, seller remanufactured, and used products transaction data from eBay, one of the most popular online markets, this paper investigates the impact of e-service offerings in four online transaction phases (i.e., information, agreement, fulfillment, and after-sales phase) on customer purchasing intention toward remanufactured products in both auctions and fixed price transactions. The results indicate that e-service offerings in the information phase are most influential on customers’ willingness to pay (WTP) in both types of transactions. In addition, we find e-services in auctions has higher positive influence on customers’ WTP compared to fixed price transactions, as demonstrated by the results that e-services in all four online transaction phases significantly influence customers’ WTP in auctions, but not in fixed price transactions. The results also show that in both types of transactions, customers are willing to pay a premium for seller remanufactured products, and even more for manufacturer remanufactured products and new products, compared with used products. Furthermore, we discuss the managerial implications on customer online purchasing intention toward remanufactured products and online sellers’ sales strategies.