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Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) electronic commerce (e-commerce) is shaping contemporary retailing. Despite the fact that a large amount of C2C e-commerce is conducted in social media-based platforms (e.g. Facebook), it has remained an unexplored area of research, though social media as a commercial platform can result in differing customer value and, thus, has potential for consumer experiences that lie beyond the reach of traditional C2C e-commerce actors. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to identify and explore distinct consumer profiles of C2C e-commerce in social media.

Confirmatory factor analysis and cluster analysis are employed to analyze the data from a quantitative survey focusing on C2C e-commerce.

Four distinct consumer profiles are introduced and discussed: enthusiasts, bargain hunters, salvagers and apathetics. These profiles capture what kind of value consumers perceive in exchanging used goods with other consumers in Facebook.

The data were collected from one country. Cultural differences in how C2C e-commerce and the role of Facebook are perceived might influence the generalizability of the results. The data set was cross-sectional and based on self-reported data.

First, the study indicates that the social media can offer a unique platform for C2C e-commerce that may result in unique and differentiated consumption experiences. Second, firms should carefully analyze how their existing segments match the consumer profiles presented in this study (enthusiasts, bargain hunters, salvagers, apathetics) to assess future value creation potential and challenges. Third, traditional retailers should evaluate the possibility of acting as a platform for C2C commerce or other types of C2C interaction in order to offer their customers benefits that are characteristic for C2C e-commerce.

This study is among the first attempts to profile C2C e-commerce consumers in social media setting. Interestingly, the profiles differ not in terms of traditional consumer demographics, but on the basis of what kind of value they perceive. Altogether, they grant interesting empirical access to explore the potential and implications of social media-based C2C e-commerce.

The purpose of this study is to address two issues relevant to those managing product returns: (1) how customers perceive the returning process and assessing the extent that these perceptions have on satisfaction with the organization, loyalty and word-of-mouth (WOM) and (2) are these outcomes moderated by whether customer returns were planned or unplanned?

The data consisted of 21 semi-structured interviews (pilot study) and a quantitative survey (n = 384; main study) targeted at consumers who had bought fashion items online.

Qualitative insights revealed that perceptions of the returning experience are driven by monetary costs, convenience, stress and guilt. Quantitative findings showed that the returning experience explains return satisfaction for both planned and unplanned returners, and returning satisfaction explains overall satisfaction and WOM. The noteworthy difference concerns loyalty: although customers that planned to return items are more loyal to the organization, it is the unplanned returners whose loyalty can be significantly increased by better managing the returning process.

Returning products online is increasingly common and thus forms an important part of the customer's overall experience with an organization. Returns management can therefore drive key customer outcomes. Understanding the dynamics between the product return experience, return satisfaction and customer outcomes will help practitioners design and implement more informed returns management strategies. Measures are also presented that assess the cognitive and emotional aspects associated with returning products.

Returning products is an increasingly important challenge for online retailers. Understanding what kinds of returning behaviors occur allows companies to design and execute better informed decisions to manage this phenomenon, not only for the sake of firm performance but also for societal and environmental benefits – the triple bottom line.

While scholars have investigated the relationship between return policies (e.g. free vs fee) and profitability, no prior literature has examined the returning experience: how consumers perceive the returning process; motivations for their returns (whether returns were planned or not) and subsequent customer outcomes.

Delivering superior customer experiences through experiential marketing strategies has become increasingly important in food retailing. While retailers seek new sources of competitive advantage, the perspective to customer experiences should be extended from the in‐store activities to post‐purchase where the value‐in‐use of the groceries eventually actualises. In this quest for an enhanced customer experience, the possibilities provided by Internet‐based service applications have been an underexplored area of research. Towards that end, the purpose of this paper is to explore and analyse how such service applications can facilitate customers' post‐purchase experiences in the context of food retailing.

A case study research setting was applied focusing on an internet‐based service application that provides customers with detailed information about the healthfulness of their groceries. Altogether 456 submissions of customer feedback data and 16 customer interviews were generated and analysed. Subsequently, a typology of facilitating customers' post‐purchase food retail experiences was constructed to uncover and illustrate how the service succeeds in extending the customer food retail experience towards the customer's context.

The authors identified four types of the typology, including “Playing”, “Check‐pointing”, “Learning”, and “Goal‐orientation”. These four types can be conceptualised through the utilitarian versus hedonic dimensions and the degree of customer transformation.

The paper introduces internet‐based service applications as a suitable experiential marketing strategy. It offers a fresh perspective and new insight into leveraging on the capabilities of the Internet in facilitating customers' post‐purchase food retail experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for identifying competitive customer value propositions in retailing.

The paper draws on existing literature on customer value and competitive advantage in order to form an understanding of the key dimensions of customer value, developing a hierarchical model of value propositions and establishing a link between customer value and competitive advantage.

The work suggests a framework for identifying competitive customer value propositions (CVPs) where four hierarchical key dimensions of customer value – economic, functional, emotional, and symbolic – are first identified. In the second stage, a CVP is developed on the basis of these value dimensions. In the third stage, the CVP is evaluated for competitive advantage. It is proposed that economic and also functional CVPs are more likely to represent points of parity, whereas emotional and social CVPs represent points of difference for retail companies seeking differentiation from their competition and gaining of competitive advantage.

Identifying competitive CVPs, the paper combines a hierarchical perspective on customer value and the concept of competitive advantage in a manner that offers managers a strategic positioning tool that links the customer's value needs to company resources and capabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to decompose total customer value as perceived by department store shoppers into utilitarian, hedonic and social dimensions, and empirically test this conceptualization in a Finnish department store shopping context.

Data were collected by a questionnaire administered over three days at a department store that generates the second largest turnover in Finland. A total of 364 shoppers completed the questionnaire.

Empirical evidence supports our tripartite conceptualization of total customer value. In particular, social value is an independent construct. Further, social value varies by day‐of‐week, with a significant increase on Saturday (versus weekdays) when the store is more crowded, whereas no such differences in utilitarian and hedonic values were detected.

The principal contribution is a tripartite conceptualization of total customer value that incorporates utilitarian, social and hedonic value dimensions in a department store shopping context. Individually these dimensions are all well rooted in streams of consumer behavior literature, albeit mostly at the product or brand, not the store, level. Increasing our understanding of these softer aspects of shopping, particularly the social dimension, is important because they represent possible differentiating factors in the highly competitive and often commoditized retail markets.

The purpose of this paper is to verify the measurement scale of shopping values in the Malaysian context. Both hedonic as well as utilitarian shopping value measurement scales were tested for their reliability and validity. Further, a series of hypotheses was developed to test the differences in the shopping values across the market segments based on demographic characteristics of the consumers. Finally, the discriminant analysis was used to determine the relative importance of each variable measuring shopping value in discriminating between the groups of interest.

The scale developed by Babin et al. for measuring shopping values has been put on test with modifications on selected questions to fit the local content. A convenient sampling technique was used to obtain information on hedonic and utilitarian values on a seven‐point Likert scale from a sample of 200 consumers from major shopping centres in Klang Valley, the most developed region in Malaysia. Statistical tools such as Cronbach's Alpha test, confirmatory factor analysis and discriminant analysis were used to analyze the data.

The findings reveal that hedonic shopping value measurement scale is a reliable and valid scale to be used for Malaysian consumers. However, the same could not be ascertained on the utilitarian shopping value measurement scale. The results further reveal that there are significant differences in the shopping values across the groups of interest. The sense of joy and escape are the most important variables discriminating between the groups based on gender, age and marital status.

The research in the area of shopping motivation is very limited in Asian countries, including Malaysia. This study undertakes an empirical examination of consumer value that encompasses the entire consumer shopping experience associated with the context.