• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.32 no.9
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• pp.1356-1365
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• 2008

As Korean retailers are expanding their return policies, customer abuse and fraud behaviors are increasing. This study attempts to understand customers' unethical return behaviors in the Korean retailing. As an exploratory approach, the study identifies behavioral patterns of unethical returns from retail employees' perspectives. A total of 168 cases collected from 112 individual interviews with retail employees are qualitatively analyzed. Unethical return behaviors are categorized into five groups: lenting/deshopping, product defects with customer faults, unreasonable compensation demands, selfish behaviors, and problem behaviors in the service encounter. The study indicates that a variety of unethical return behaviors are observed despite a short history of return policy in Korea, and renting/deshopping and product defects with customer faults are the most prevalent return abuse behaviors.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.32 no.9
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• pp.1376-1386
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• 2008

The purposes of this study were to explore the techniques of neutralization on unethical customer return behaviors, examine the differences in the neutralizations by customer characteristics, and examine the relationships of neutralizations with customer ethics, anomie, and impulsive behaviors. A total of 609 questionnaires were analyzed. Four factors including denial of injury/victim, condemning the condemners, denial of responsibility, and appeal to higher loyalties were extracted from the neutralization techniques. The neutralization techniques were not different by customer characteristics, but were negatively related with customer ethics and positively related with anomie and impulsive behaviors. The results indicate that the neutralization techniques are appropriate to understand unethical customer return behaviors in the Korean retail settings.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.907-916
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• 2008

The purposes of this study were to examine the consumer beliefs on the wrongness and occurrence of unethical behaviors in retail settings, to examine the differences in unethical beliefs by consumer characteristics, and to examine the effects of anomie on unethical beliefs. A total of 609 questionnaires collected from a consumer survey were analyzed. Results revealed that respondents tended to perceive illegal activities as the most unethical and the least prevalent behaviors and downloading intellectual properties as the least unethical and the most prevalent behaviors. There were differences by age, marital status, occupation, and education in the four dimensions of unethical beliefs including actively benefiting from illegal/deceiving activities, passively benefiting at the expense of the seller, no harm/no foul, and common but questionable actions. Partial differences were observed by shopping frequency and return experience. Valuelessness of anomie affected actively benefiting from illegal/deceiving activities and no harm/no foul.