Title: Consumers' preferences in purchasing recycled/refurbished products: an empirical investigation

Authors: Hediyeh Mahmoodi; Jafar Heydari

Addresses: School of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Iran ' School of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Iran

Abstract: In this paper, we empirically examine consumers' behaviour in purchasing products made of recycled material. The impact of three factors of discount, warranty, and money-back guarantee (return acceptance) on respondents' willingness to buy recycled/refurbished products are analysed by conducting a survey using a questionnaire on 150 respondents. Our survey examines how people with different levels of consumer environmental awareness (CEA) and perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE) behave while they buy various types of recycled/refurbished goods. To this aim, we categorise products into four sorts: 1) technology; 2) household; 3) personal; 4) luxury. Our findings reveal that recycled/refurbished technology products are more popular while there is a little interest in buying refurbished personal products. In addition, the results demonstrate that, although offering discount and warranty have a positive impact on the consumers' willingness to purchase recycled/refurbished products, more than half of the respondents prefer money-back guarantee when buying a recycled/refurbished product.

Keywords: consumer preferences; consumer environmental awareness; CEA; discount; warranty; money-back guarantee; recycled product; refurbished product.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2021.114249

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2021 Vol.38 No.4, pp.594 - 609

Received: 27 Feb 2019
Accepted: 26 May 2019
Published online: 15 Apr 2021 *

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