Intellectual Capital (IC) is the intellectual capability of an organization; it drives the usage of other productive resources and adds value to the business structure. Although the expanding literature on IC has enhanced our understanding, the effects of IC with relation to consumers have not been explored in the marketing literature. Thus, this study fills this void by approaching the notion of IC from a customer perspective. Customer value also has attracted extensive attention in recent years. However, the lack of agreement among scholars with respect to the conceptualization of customer value has resulted in inconsistent empirical measures. Furthermore, despite extensive research focus on IC and customer value separately, there is a void in the literature as far as investigating the relationship between the two is concerned. Thus, this study also empirically investigates the predictive relationships among the various dimensions of IC and perceived customer value. This dissertation delineates three dimensions of IC (i.e., Human Capital, Structural Capital, and Relational Capital) available to a retail store in creating value for customers. This study tests the psychometric properties of scale items for measuring these three resources in an apparel retailing context. It also tests the effects of IC on customer value …

Product return is a necessary part of the exchange process between companies and customers. It accounts for approximately 16% of total sales and a reduction in retailer / manufacturer profits by 3.8% on average. However, industry data also indicates that a significant portion of products are returned for reasons other than product failure – e.g., change of mind, found a lower price elsewhere, or fraudulent and unethical reasons. Consequently, many firms (e.g., REI) have altered their generous return policies to protect their profits. However, it’s been found that the restricted return policy could also reduce customer satisfaction, increase the perceived risk, and thus negatively affect customers’ loyalty towards a particular store or firm. Thus having a restrictive return policy does not help either. Extant literature mainly focuses on return policies. Little attention has been devoted to the product return behavior itself, thus missing the consumer’s perspective. This study, therefore, focuses on understanding consumers’ return behaviors, including different types of return behaviors, and the drivers and consequences of these different return behaviors. Towards this goal, this study first categorizes all possible types of consumers’ return behaviors into two broad categories - legitimate return behaviors and opportunistic return behaviors. Second, both internal …