This study makes a first effort to understand the factors affecting customers' decisions to invoke warranties, and to distinguish this behavior from the factors affecting customer perceptions of service quality. The study context is GTE's introduction of a warranty program as part of a telecommunications repair service for small business customers. The results suggest that customer perceptions ...

The long-term sustainability of our resources is dependent on reducing the consumption of virgin resources, and one method of achieving this goal is product remanufacturing. It is already established that the production of remanufactured products costs less than that of creating a new one, however the effects of this on warranty costs are now considered. Due to consumer perceptions of the quali...

We formulate a structural econometric model to analyze the impact of service attributes (warranty length, after-sales service quality) on consumer demand in the U.S.automobile industry. Our results indicate that service attributes play a compensatory role with respect to product quality, i.e., the impact of warranty length and service quality on demand increases when product quality decreases. ...

The high cost of lenient return policies force consumer electronics OEMs to look for ways to recover value from lightly used consumer returns, which constitute a substantial fraction of sales and cannot be re-sold as new products. Refurbishing to remarket or to fulfill warranty claims are the two common disposition options considered to unlock the value in consumer returns, which present the OE...