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Two Essays on Crowdfunding and Consumer Returns.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Two Essays on Crowdfunding and Consumer Returns./
Author:	Liu, Dan.
Description:	1 online resource (89 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 84-12, Section: B.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International84-12B.
Subject:	Information technology. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9798379743369

Two Essays on Crowdfunding and Consumer Returns.
Liu, Dan.

Two Essays on Crowdfunding and Consumer Returns. - 1 online resource (89 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 84-12, Section: B.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 2023.

Includes bibliographical references

Success is not always so guaranteed. Companies face opportunities, as well as challenges. Each company experiences a series of crises and upheavals. According to Gordon Moore, chairman of Intel, success is "only a disaster away," and potential difficulties are always looming on the horizon. Such difficulties can be set off by almost anything: a sudden global outbreak like COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, a high consumer return rate, or a new competitor. When a crisis or a difficulty hits, the ordinary rules for how the organization operates get torn up quickly. This "abnormal" situation calls for unprecedented measures. However, many firms find themselves fully unprepared to handle the crisis or difficulties well. According to Fischer et al. (2019), even in those companies with crisis management teams, the managers often do not have a plan for how the company would function in a crisis or during a difficult time. A crisis can be an opportunity to win in the marketplace if managed right. My research interest focuses on how to bridge that narrow line between difficulties and opportunity, and especially, how to seize those opportunities.My first dissertation paper focuses on how COVID-19 can be a financing opportunity for small businesses (SMEs) and startups. Crowdfunding is a new technology platform that connects two parties: entrepreneurs and SMEs who launch campaigns to collect money and funders who visit the platform and decide whether to support the project. Despite only being around since 2009, crowdfunding has become a popular entrepreneurship financing option and is catching up to traditional financing channels like venture capital. We propose that such a fast-growing online technology platform offered a vital financing resource for financially constrained entrepreneurs during the pandemic. Our empirical analysis results confirm my proposition that the number of funders, the size of their contributions, and their total investment amounts all increased with the increased severity of COVID-19, challenging the existing belief that a crisis has a negative effect on entrepreneurship financing. We further examine the prediction that one plausible reason for funders' increasing investment demand is altruism-- funders are more willing to support and help entrepreneurs to bring their projects to life when they are struggling financially due to COVID-19. This result is consistent with current findings about the altruistic nature of funders noted in the literature. However, on the supply side, entrepreneurs have reduced their project-launching activities despite more financing opportunities on the demand side. We therefore urge entrepreneurs to launch new ventures to tap into crowdfunding resources.My second dissertation paper focuses on how consumer returns can be an opportunity for online retailers to improve their sales. Many retailers treat product returns as an evil because returns hurt their bottom line. However, new research has suggested that a return serves as another customer touchpoint to enhance consumer relationships. A superior return experience can offer an opportunity to acquire higher consumer satisfaction than if the failure had never happened (McCollough et al., 2000) and thus increase consumer repurchase. While existing research focuses on the overall positive effect of returns on repurchase, we question whether this effect applies to all returns. We classify consumer returns based on the reason for the return-the wrong size, not liking the item, disappointment with the quality, and other reasons. Then we examine how the reason for the return impacts future consumer purchases. Our regression results suggest that only sizing returns increase the likelihood of consumer repurchases. In contrast, items returned because the consumer does not like the product decrease repurchases and returns based on quality concerns do not significantly affect repurchases. We further explain my results based on the attribution theory: customers' return reasons influence how they blame a seller and then how they respond. For example, sizing returns, at least partially, can be self-ascribed to consumers because consumers' body dimensions- height, chest size, waist size, and so on-vary significantly, and so designing a product to fit everyone can be challenging. Due to self- attribution, customers tend to have a lower initial dissatisfaction caused by a return event, which a redress process (i.e., a good return experience) can easily recover. Our paper contributes to consumer return literature by addressing the rarity of return-reason-related research. We also provide important managerial insights to improve retailers' return service recovery practices, customer value evaluation and customer retention.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2024

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9798379743369Subjects--Topical Terms:

559429
Information technology.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Consumer returnsIndex Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

Two Essays on Crowdfunding and Consumer Returns.
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