Advances in Digital Marketing and eCommerce

The growth of social media usage and its utilization in marketing campaigns has created a new class of community leaders online, called influencers. Influencers appeared on social media as relevant content creators on a certain niche topic such as sports, comedy, make-up etc. The make-up industry has completely adopted the trend of influencers which ended up disrupting the entire industry. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the effects that influencer marketing has had on the make-up industry and how it has become essential for marketers with a focus on that industry. This includes a comparison of influencer marketing to other marketing options such as TV and Online Paid Ads, the cost of advertisement, effectiveness and ability to influence consumer behavior, primary data, data obtained from secondary sources as well as personal contact with influencer agencies.

This paper draws on a visual social semiotic analysis to illustrate how brand semiotics could be used as a social media marketing tool to select brand visuals that will attract attention and drive social conversations. Consumers nowadays access and interpret online brand messages differently due to social media and access to more technologies. While brands today have more visibility and can create and share brand messages on numerous social media platforms for a wider reach, the power has shifted to consumers. Because of more access to online information consumers can choose to either ignore or share and engage with a brand’s messages. By analysing one brand visual that sparked many reactions on social media, it is demonstrated how stronger viewer involvement can be achieved with embedded signs and symbols with which the viewer can resonate. The findings demonstrate that it is important for social media marketers to develop the inner meaning of visuals by placing consumers in a specific visual relationship with the visual. In doing so, the paper addresses the paucity of research on the semiotics of brand visuals and also provides a heuristic for social media marketers how to consider signs and symbols embedded in visuals for more impact on social media.

The widespread use of voice assistants (VAs), which collect and process a huge volume of user data through user interactions, is beginning to attract the attention of marketing researchers. The early studies investigating consumers' negative (i.e., risk) and positive (i.e., benefits) perceptions related to users-VAs interactions appear partial and fragmented. Consequently, this paper aims at exploring the key perceptual factors of risk and benefits of interactions with VAs on smartphones. Then, we propose to profile Generation Y users according to their perceptions and analyse whether they are significantly different in terms of frequency of VA use, VA attitude, VA familiarity, innovativeness and age. By adopting a quantitative exploratory approach, 349 questionnaires are collected and validated. By running an exploratory factor analysis, a three-factor solution is outlined. Besides, the non-hierarchical k-means cluster analysis highlights three Generation Y user clusters. This research contributes to the nascent strand of studies on user perceptions related to interactions with VAs, by offering an overall view of perceived risk and benefits. Finally, we propose to marketers strategic guidelines in terms of targeting and marketing communication design.

TikTok, the fastest growing app of 2020, has received much attention for its growth, creativity and marketing opportunities. Much accelerated through COVID19, TikTok has grown to over 800 million monthly active users and has catapulted itself in frontline media. However, the app has also shown to tightly control its infrastructure through its algorithm centric built, its approach to content censorship and active brand management. With that, TikTok has gone different routes than many predating platforms. Through TikTok’s creator marketplace and indirectly monetizing content creators through its creator fund, TikTok has also shown to hold a tight grip on content creator. For this reason, this study examines the impact of TikTok and brands on content creator’ content sovereignty. Through structured interviews, this study found evidence to suggest that TikTok’s influence on the content behavior of its creator exceeds that of brands. It continues to propose a conceptual model to validate the findings through an empirical research track.

This research analyzes the social media activity of three movie studios (20th Century Fox, Warner Bros and Universal Studios), and how that is affecting in the numbers and relevance of each. We develop a database to keep a record of the decisions this companies have been doing and how they take advantage of the tools presented by the social media. Methodology is quantitative. We collect frequency of posts, special events, types of post, the number of likes and comments retrieved from the viewers and also the number of shared posts. We have focused in different parts of each social media since, each one is designed to fulfill one specific aspect. With that approach we expect to determine which of the companies has understood better the way they have to be used and if they had won any kind of advantage through the good use of this medias presented as more interaction between themselves and the viewers and a more effective way to present their products. We conclude a correlation between enterprises (movie studios) and social media.

The covid-19 pandemic has posed massive challenges to every actor of our social system. In Southeast Asia, businesses are no exception; well-established corporations moved toward digital transformation faster than others. With a prescriptive objective in mind, this study explores the acceleration of the digital transformation in the retail industry in Sri Lanka upon the Covid-19 pandemic. Taking a qualitative research approach, the paper describes different approaches for DT. Business leaders from banking, telecommunication, and fast moving consumer goods were interviewed. Some business leaders had a strategic vision towards digitalization, not because they anticipated the pandemic coming, but rather because of its advantages. Managers saw that digital transformation would bring two main advantages. One is through disintermediation, by reaching out to clients directly, and that customers can reach out to businesses anytime anywhere. Second, in terms of the cost factor, digital implementations were conceived comparatively cheaper in the long run. The ‘new normal’ of businesses keep changing its ways every day as the virus variants evolve, warning us, this could be a situation that we have to deal with for longer than anticipated. This makes investing in digitalization and further keep the impetus of agile implementation worth the effort.

Facebook is attracting marketers’ attention as a productive tool for generating successful marketing campaigns. Understanding the aspects influencing customers’ intention to purchase was thoroughly examined in the literature. Nevertheless, the relationship between the intention to purchase and the intention to engage is still largely understudied. The objective of this study is to explore possible relationships between the components of the latent dependent variable, individual intention to engage on Facebook (FB), and the components of the latent independent variables; crowd’s engagement, cognitive and affective trust components, and order-related risk factors, by using a five-point anchored scale of the intention to purchase for measurement. The results showed that the crowd’s engagement behavior is positively associated to the intention to follow a brand’s FB page, while financial risk found to be negatively associated to the intention to share or like a brand’s FB content. Results also suggested it could be a good practice to avoid symbols and emoji’s in the advert’s primary text, and that trusted FB friends’ engagement behavior is positively related to the intention to comment, making it a suitable candidate for harboring e-WoM. This study helps practitioners identify important factors for the success of digital marketing campaigns.

In today's world, social media is already a full-fledged part of the marketing mix. Their growth has been huge in recent years. Our paper seeks to analyze the metrics that make up social media engagement and their relationship with consumer’s purchase intentions. The variables examined in our study were the number of likes, comments, shares, followers, and respondents' purchase intentions. Data for this study were collected via the CAWI - computer assisted web interviewing method. The dataset consisted of 372 respondents. In the study, we analyzed the degree of correlation for the four established hypotheses. The results indicate the statistical significance of the examined relationships for all selected social media exposure metrics. These findings were presented in the context of existing research with an aim to expand current knowledge in this area. The results support the perceived importance of these variables in the purchasing process while proving important for e-commerce and s-commerce.

As online shopping grows, problems with online shopping grow, too. The main aim of the paper is to evaluate and compare problems customer face when online shopping in the Visegrad Four countries (Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland). The paper outlines the theoretical basis of online shopping and describes the main problems related to shopping via Internet. Based on data from the Eurostat database, the paper compares specific online shopping problems in the years 2015, 2017 and 2019. We found that the highest incidence of problems with online shopping in 2015 was reported in Hungary (40%), in 2017 in Poland (18%) and in 2019 in Czech Republic (28%). The most frequent problem in all V4 countries was that the delivery time of goods or services was longer than it was stated by the seller on the store’s website.

It is believed that due to quarantine regulations during the covid-19 crisis, more people are attracted to social media. Especially TikTok seems to be linked to this crisis, given its rise to fame during the same period. However, to date, very little is known about TikTok regarding the number of users or usage characteristics. While considered a Social Network Site (SNS) oriented toward a younger audience of kids and teens, we hypothesized that TikTok would find its way to mainstream adult audiences, given the increasing attention devoted to this particular SNS in popular media. Cross-sectional data from 2500 Belgians (age between 18–64 years old) during the covid-19 crisis in 2020 show an expanding adoption of TikTok in daily active users (DAU). Further logistic regression analyses on the number of DAU show individual differences in sociodemographic background comparing SNS Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. The adult’s resulting profile on TikTok is younger, less graduated, with a lower income, living in urban areas, and having kids. Contrary to expectations, we did not find a gender effect nor a student effect. While not yet at the level of Facebook and Instagram, TikTok succeeded to quickly gain momentum in the adult space, to a level that is reaching that of a longer-standing platform like Twitter.

This study investigates how social media (SM) can affect the consumer-brand relationship phenomena. Basing on the literature concerning the so-called “dark side” of social media (e.g., fake news and memes), the authors analyze the case of Corona beer. Web-users attacked this Mexican brand due to the link between its brand name and the Coronavirus. The case was analyzed via Twitter textual analysis. Results offer insights for both scholars and practitioners.

In this study, we analyze the digital marketing tools activated by SMEs operating in B2B during the Covid-19 outbreak in the first half of 2020. Before the health emergency, SMEs used social and digital media in a limited way as compared to traditional tools, such as printed material and client visits. In order to understand how the pandemic changed the digital marketing strategies adopted in B2B, we conducted a study on nine Italian SMEs. We collected semi-structured interviews with key informants belonging to companies operating in different sectors. Findings suggest new relational approaches and opportunities based on digital marketing and they discuss the main objectives of the main digital tools adopted during the initial phase of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The presence of brands online has intensified over the past decade. Previous research has found that following online updates from a brand’s Facebook page enhances brand evaluations. As Instagram is emerging as one of the most popular social media platforms, we extended previous research by simulating the experience of navigating online on a smartphone while focusing on this platform. Our main goal was to understand if brands with a large number of followers versus brands with a small number of followers are perceived differently by consumers. Findings from two studies (Ntotal = 313) suggest that purchase intention and brand trust are higher for Instagram brand pages with a large number of followers. However, the perceived quality and likeliness to refer the brand to a friend are not affected by the number of followers. Also, we found no significant gender differences across variables.

Previous research has demonstrated that atmospherics (lighting, scent, music, temperature, store layout, product display, etc.) impact consumers’ emotional and behavioral responses, and marketers have applied them to in-store strategies to stimulate purchases. However, in the last decades retailers are confronting a significant technological transformation and face the challenges to attract a digital consumer in an online setting. This work focuses on new insights provided by marketing researchers about the role of atmospherics in the context of online stores. We contribute to this debate by providing a systematic literature review of articles published in the last decade on atmospherics in the main journals of marketing. The present study has two main objectives: first, identify theoretical keys about the role of atmospherics in online stores. And second, recognize areas for future research.

TikTok was the undisputed rising star of Social Media in 2020. Although the app has started to rival Facebook for attention and the entire social media landscape regarding monthly active user growth, academic research on TikTok’s secret to success is still scarce. This paper seeks to contribute to research by trying to identify how TikTok outperforms its rival with an advanced algorithm and inspire more academics to investigate the subject. A literature review will provide context, followed by a study amongst TikTok users in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Results show that TikTok has overtaken Facebook by an average of 30 min amongst teenagers’ daily app usage. TikTok’s matchmaking algorithm plays a major role in this battle for attention by not only focusing on a user’s friendship network, but on the user’s explicit behaviour. Evaluating the theory of escapism as a motivator to use the app seems to suggest that TikTok outperforms Facebook based on content related criteria. Since both applications apply matchmaking on the basis of user generated content, it is suggested that TikTok’s user focused algorithm outranks that of Facebook. TikTok thus marks a trend change in social media by putting user centric algorithmic content curation before peer-network driven considerations.

Social media marketing is an integral part of digital marketing. It requires a strategy, user generated content and technology applications. A review of the identified German literature unveiled eighteen social media strategy frameworks, of which only three included the component of social media monitoring. This is in contrast to the English literature, where social media monitoring is evidenced in a large literature review. The research analyses and describes the eighteen identified frameworks in the German literature, validates them against a generic social media strategy framework consisting of seven components/steps; and describes the underrepresented component of social media monitoring by suggesting a four-step process.

Our research investigates what increases click-through rates on YouTube videos, specifically the role of the thumbnail, the video title, and the verification badge. In the thumbnail, we look at the role of color characteristics and the inclusion of people, drawing on color psychology and the parasocial interaction phenomenon. In the video title, we look at the role of capital letters and emotional words, drawing on the elaboration likelihood model and negativity bias. Finally, we look at the role of the verification badge, drawing on source credibility theory. To test our hypotheses, we gather data from YouTube, by using YouTube’s Application Programming Interface (API) to collect 50,000 thumbnails, video titles and other relevant data from a total of 1000 influencers in 10 different categories. Our findings will have implications across the marketing and information systems domains and, practically, will provide guidance for the many influencers who rely on the optimal reach of their videos as their source of income.

The ever-growing online shopping environment provides an opportunity for companies of all sizes to reach expanding customer bases across borders. However, research on the factors influencing online purchase intent are limited, and even more from an international point of view given that geographical marketplace barriers are less evident online. This paper explores the various antecedents of online purchase intent in terms of e-communication strategies (e.g. corporate social responsibility [CSR], peer reviews and expert opinion) for international consumers. To approach this as a global phenomenon, an international dataset of 804 international online consumers is analysed. The study finds complexity in the actors and pathways that inform purchase intent in the online retail context. Particularly, it finds that a company’s CSR has no direct effect on purchase intent but is mediated by information received from online reviews by peers and experts as intermediary e-communications channels. This suggests that online retailers must consider other communication strategies, beyond the traditional buyer-seller dyad, to boost CSR perceptions and purchase intent. The study offers a first step to theorising the online retail context as an international phenomenon where traditional marketing concepts currently remain under-problematised.

Social media is regarded as one of the most cost-effective, yet efficient tools for marketing communication and promotion. The current study examined the usage and applications of social media among supermarket retailers in New Zealand. This study also examined how grocery stores and supermarkets in New Zealand had used social media for implementing six strategic marketing objectives: customer involvement, interaction, intimacy, influence, insights, and impacts. This study examined and analysed the Facebook pages of all six supermarket chains in New Zealand. Results indicated significant differences across supermarkets in terms of achieving those objectives. Results also suggested that retailers could do more in terms of enhancing customer interaction, intimacy, and impacts. The study provided direction on how retailers can better manage their social media contents to build profitable customer relationships.

This paper seeks to contribute to the literature on the design of brand image for small and little-known destination, on the premise that social media are a major source for the formation and the promotion of a new brand image. The analysis focuses on the brand reshaping of a small Italian village and shows the existence of a strong link between social media and the economic and social development of the territory.The results make a contribution to the literature on destination branding and social media with implications for researchers and policy makers. They open up new trajectories of research and new applications opportunities for the effective and successful use of social media in the context of small and unknown destinations: social media enables small destinations to promote new development patterns and enhance the regeneration of their distinctive resources. Thanks to social media small destinations become a great generator of economic, cultural and social value that benefit entire territories

Over the past few years, the increasing popularity of social media influencers has made influencer marketing a prominent and prevalent strategy for businesses. Its unique aspects, innovative approaches, and significant commercial value have attracted an increasing body of research. The literature has collectively accumulated a sizable and dispersive list of factors that affect followers’ attitude and intention towards influencers’ recommended products/brands. This paper provides an integrative and cohesive framework, based on Berlo’s SMCR model of communication, to consolidate these factors in a structured manner and provide a comprehensive view on the effect mechanism of influencer marketing. Under this framework, it reviews key factors studied and the major conclusions drawn. Additionally, the paper delineates several important yet understudied areas for future search.

The underlying principle of digital inclusiveness is to enable accessibility for everyone from all walks of life. However, the question arises on how digital inclusiveness support, maintain or improve the wellbeing of an ageing society when communication technology slowly taking effect in their life? Also, are the existing social media platforms adequate to sustain the demand for better communication and ensure their essential communication needs are met without marginalising them? This issue is of particular concern to the old age group, which is growing due to low population growth and an increasingly long-life span of 71.7 years for males and 75 years for females. Considering the context, the social media usage of the elderly needs further scrutinisation to help digital marketers continuously understand the ageing market segment and discourage the burnout effect from occurring to them. This is important to ensure the geriatric market experience a worthy customer journey from the marketing communication targeted to them on the digital front. Henceforward, this research generates new knowledge on the social media usage of the elderly and revisits the Stressor-Strain-Outcome (SSO) model where the aspect of social media fatigue and isolation are addressed.

The marketing communication services market has been transformed by digitisation, which has led to the evolution of traditional agencies, the emergence of new digital agencies, and the entry of consulting firms into the market. The literature on agencies has investigated the differences between traditional and digital agencies in terms of structures, processes, and culture. However, little is known about new players’ value propositions. Given the phenomenological variety of digital agencies found in the management literature, the research aims to investigate the characteristics of these players’ value proposition. Through a qualitative exploratory approach based on 22 in-depth interviews with communication professionals and the subsequent thematic content analysis, the authors identified three different digital agencies’ typologies: strategic digital consultants, integrated digital communication agencies, and specialised digital communication agencies. Given the absence of studies on the topic, the paper contributes to the literature on agencies by outlining the key characteristics of the value proposition of the three typologies of digital agencies identified in terms of the offering, target and strategy. From a managerial perspective, this study may reduce client disorientation, better define the competitive landscape, and, finally, improve the communication network’s performance.

Companies should know their customers, and more than simply the market expectations, managers should track consumers’ experiences, particularly the interactions they have in the online environment. The understanding of the user experience allows the design of strategic touchpoints, through digital media techniques. Considering the growing importance of digital transactions through social networks, this chapter consists on a review of academic literature about online customer journey in social commerce platforms, in order to inform readers about the metrics used to identify the moments of truth and possible obstacles that compromise the online experience and consequently sales conversion.

An aspect-based recommendation model (ARM) was proposed to detect local and global aspect representations in customer reviews available on ecommerce websites for fashion merchandising. This model was constructed with two independent paths to process user/item reviews simultaneously, and each path had a convolutional neural network (CNN), a long-short time memory network (LSTM) with attention mechanism to separately capture local aspect features and global aspect features. To enhance the generalization of the ARM model, the local and global aspect features from both user and item reviews were merged through mutual operations prior to the rating prediction. The Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry dataset from Amazon 5-core was used to train and test ARM. The significance of the extracted aspects regarding user preferences and item properties from the reviews were examined as opposed to several state-of-the-art fashion recommenders.

The proliferation of user-generated posts about brands on social media has inspired interest by both practitioners and scholars in the factors promoting the diffusion of information within social networks. This has led to efforts by firms to seed and exert control over consumer-driven word of mouth on social media platforms (often referred to as buzz marketing) with varying degrees of success. The question still remains however, as to why information about certain brands is shared more than others. In the current paper we extend the conceptualization originating from the “strength of weak ties” theory to encompass tie valence as a separate dimension alongside tie strength. We then identify consumer schadenfreude (the feeling of joy over another’s misfortune) as a critical motivator of information diffusion between network members who share a negatively valenced tie. Finally, we outline the value to marketers in incentivizing consumers to share information among their negative network ties since this is expected to lead to more widespread sharing of information about low equity brands.

This study shows that in order to develop their social media advertising strategies and obtain optimal results, global luxury brands that wish to enter the Chinese market, must consider a number of Chinese cultural peculiarities. Several studies have already used the cross-cultural theoretical framework for the purpose of identifying some effective luxury brands’ marketing and communication strategies. This research recognizes specific features that can be used to create targeted and successful social media advertising approaches. As the majority of Chinese luxury consumers are Millennials and Gen Z, brands are even more challenged. In fact, these segments show preference for digital communication tools, media, and channels, with social media advertising representing the most valuable strategy. Global luxury brands that seek to profitably use social media adverting, besides taking into account specific Chinese cultural-related features and contexts, must also identify, understand, and learn how to employ any useful stratagem emerging from innovation in digital communication. This would allow brands to compete in the global marketplace while increasing their growth rate thanks to updated and effective social media advertising strategies.

Online shopping, especially apparel shopping, is expected to grow rapidly in South Africa, one of the largest economies on the African continent. A market segment that shows lucrative growth opportunities is the male millennial online apparel shopper, but published research on the online buying behaviour of this group of consumers is scant. To address the academic and practical knowledge gaps on male millennial consumer behaviour in terms of online apparel shopping, this study set out to investigate a number of factors that can influence these consumers to repurchase apparel in an online environment. The study focused on South African millennial male consumers who had previously purchased apparel from a large and well-established South African online fashion retailer and semi-replicated a study conducted by Kim et al. (2012). Data were collected by means of an electronic self-administered non-interactive questionnaire. A total of 349 useable questionnaires were retrieved for statistical analyses. It was found that utilitarian shopping values do not directly influence the intention of millennial South African men to repurchase apparel from the investigated online fashion retailer. On the other hand, the results revealed that hedonic shopping values do influence the online apparel repurchase intention of this consumer cohort. The results of this study provide valuable insights in understanding the apparel repurchase intention of the South African millennial male consumer in the 21st century. The insights can be used by online retailers to develop more effective marketing strategies to capitalise on this lucrative market segment.

In this paper, we explore the shift in digital communications by selling firms to enhance the value of their offerings. Based on in-depth interviews with professional purchasers, this paper’s findings suggest that business-to-business relationships’ future success will depend on a differentiated value approach by salespeople. Using the Kraljic matrix, we explore the offerings and digital communications focused around four types of business-to-business purchases—strategic, leverage, bottleneck, and non-critical products.

The emergence of the sharing economy is a reflection of the power of the internet to change the way of life and how the world of business has been changed. eCommerce has increased in intensity as peer-to-peer transactions and the sharing economy have increased by the sheer number of transactions ignited by the internet, smartphone penetration and the availability of wifi. The tourism industry has been a partner to the sharing economy and supported lifestyle entrepreneurship which is associated with the sharing economy. The paucity of public transport led to Uber emerging as a substitute and this this led to mode switching. Mode switching attracted competitors, and intense competition led to the entry of Bolt in South Africa. Sharing economy companies have evolved to deliver food services, responding to changing consumer needs in South Africa. Airbnb is well entrenched in South Africa, and the need to involve the previously disadvantaged groups as entrepreneurs led to the establishment of Airbnb Africa Academy that trains entrepreneurs to become successful business people. The future of mobility which would drive ecommerce will be defined by urban mobility in the sky, and poses challenges for regulators.

Social media has become an important instrument for marketers to include in their marketing arsenal. A social network site that is of specific importance to many global marketers, especially those targeting the millennial generation, is Instagram. A popular marketing strategy used on Instagram is that of influential marketing where brands use influencers to promote their products and brands. Despite the popularity of influential marketing, little research is available on the use of influential marketing in an Instagram context. This study was therefore conceptualised and executed to investigate the influence of selected system-generated cues and user-generated content on the perceived credibility of an influencer as brand endorser and thus source to consumers on Instagram. Both qualitative and quantitative research were conducted. In the qualitative phase, two focus group discussions confirmed the variables that were measured in quantitative research which consisted of a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial experiment. A non-probability convenience sampling technique realised a sample of 311 millennial female respondents (18–25) across 8 experimental groups. The results indicated that advertising disclosure significantly influenced overall perceived source (influencer) credibility, trustworthiness and homophily, while non-disclosure was perceived more positively by respondents than advertising disclosure. The findings of the study make a valuable contribution to a field in marketing that is growing in popularity and it is believed that insights gained can be used rewardingly by academic scholars and strategic marketers who have an interest in using Instagram as a marketing tool.

In the telecommunication industry, at the very top of the revenue generation hierarchy is the classification of the B2C and B2B cash flow sources broken down into various service packages available for each segment. The work-from-home during the pandemic has helped generate more revenues for telecom vendors coming from B2C pool. However, the revenues from the B2B side suffered as clients’ cash flows are challenged during the pandemic. This study attempts to compute the clients’ equity CE of the only local Senegalese telecommunication company. The net value of the average Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) of all cohorts makes up the CE, whereas, the “net present value of all current and future profits generated from a customer over the life of his or her business with the firm” defines CLTV. The results suggest that Waw telecom will realize a surplus in CE at the end of the client’s expected average lifespan.

Businesses are increasingly marketing their products on social media platforms in order to better communicate with their customers. Considering stimulus-organism- response (SOR) theory, this study uncovers the impacts of social media (SM) greenwashing on SM green advertising skepticism and on its consequences including green purchase intention. The findings reveal that SM greenwashing affects SM green advertising skepticism. Further, SM green advertising negatively affect SM information utility and positively affect SM negative word-of-mouth. The study also highlights that SM information utility positively affects green purchase intention and negative word-of-mouth negatively affect green purchase intention. The study also reveals that SM green confusion moderates the relation between SM greenwashing and SM green advertising skepticism. The study offers several theoretical and practical contributions.

Ecommerce packaging is a threat to ecological environment. Package-free return modes could be an implementable measure to reduce ecommerce packaging and create green value for the planet. Basically, online consumers can directly return online purchases in store without packaging them. This article introduces a package-free return mode and illustrates the value of offering the return service. By reviewing and comparing with relevant literature, this article reveals that package-free returns are an interesting research topic and merits further research.