| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 企業管理學系所 === 99 === The purpose of this paper is to analyze the manufacturer and retailer’s optimal return policies in an indirect channel. In the literature of return policy, most studies focus on the case of direct channel. In the thesis, I consider the case of indirect channel. In other words, the manufacturer can decide to offer his return policy to the retailer or not, and then the retailer can decide to offer her return policy to consumers or not. Further, the product quality is endogenous in the model. One interesting finding is that the relationship between product quality and refund amount is non-monotonic.
In the basic model, only the retailer can offer her return policy to consumers. I find that the manufacturer has an incentive to induce the retailer to offer her return policy. In the equilibrium, the low-valuation consumers will return the products if it is misfit, but the high-valuation consumers will never return. As a result, the return policy has the effect of price discrimination and then facilitates the channel coordination.
In the extended model, the manufacturer can also offer his return policy to the retailer. I find that the manufacturer may have more profits when he offers the return policy. It means under certain conditions, the manufacturer is optimal to offer the return policy to extract most channel profits.
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