Rating e-Tailer's Money-Back Guarantees

Most e-tailers offer money-back guarantees (MBGs) on product returns, but coverage and durations of different policies vary significantly across e-tailers (taking into account restocking fees, shipping and handling fees, and coverage duration). To help consumers and e-tailers evaluate MBG policies, we developed three different MBGQual (money-back guarantee quality) indexes that measure the insurance protection, costs, and attractiveness of the MBGs to consumers. The usefulness of these indexes is illustrated by examining MBGs offered by electronic product e-tailers.