線上購物零售業之消費者退貨影響因素分析

Abstract

網際網路的代表著一新興市場，電子商務成為重新整合供應者與消費者關係的新商業模式。資策會預期2008年臺灣B2C市場規模可達1385億，相較於去年度的市場規模有38％的成長。由此可見，線上購物的規模與成長不容小覷。然而，隨著市場的成熟，退貨也逐漸成為線上購物零售商所需克服的議題之ㄧ。過去的文獻探討到退貨議題，往往集中在供應商與零售商間，但隨著線上購物的興盛，零售商與終端消費者間的退貨議題，逐漸被受重視。 本研究擬針對線上購物之交易，利用實證資料以決策樹分類模型判別交易是否退貨，藉以了解何判別變數影響顧客之退貨傾向。判別變數分為三大類別，分別是顧客屬性變數、商品變數以及服務變數。 研究結果發現，變數中－商品種類、價格與配送天數能夠較有效地判別消費者退貨傾向的高低，最後，針對決策樹所歸納出的規則與變數範圍，研擬對應策略以作為網站管理者控制線上購物退貨之參考。

The internet represents a growing and huge market. The development of e-commerce is an efficient business model which enables new relationship between consumers and suppliers. In particular, the B2C market in Taiwan is expected to reach NT $138.5 billion with 38% increase in 2008. The E-retailing is obviously becoming a noticeable market. However, as the market grows and matures, “return” becomes one of the challenges for E-tailers. In the past, most of the literature on return issues focused on the wholesaler-retailer relationship. Recently, due to the advent of Internet-based retailing within the past decade, attention is shifting to the issue of returns in the retailer-consumer relationship. In this study, we use empirical data and conduct a Decision Tree model to analyze the critical variables revealing the customer return propensity. There are 3 dimensions of variables in our data set- customer demographic variables, merchandise variables and service variables. We find that three variables- category, price and delivery days could be used to distinguishing customer return propensity more effectively. In accordance with these variables, we propose some strategies for website managers to control returns in E-retailing.