Sustainable Reverse Logistics Practices in Apparel Retailing
摘要
Sustainability in fashion encompasses many factors, including cutting CO2 emissions, addressing overproduction, reducing pollution and waste, supporting biodiversity, and ensuring that garment workers are paid a fair wage and have safe working conditions. An effective supply chain is essential to address the sustainability issues in the fashion industry. There is also a need for handling the reverse supply chain and that is the moving of products from customer to manufacturer or disposal for many reasons. Reverse logistics is the process that manages this. It needs to be sustainable and efficiently used in the fashion supply chain to effectively handle the returned goods or materials without decreasing their value and to increase the scope for further usage. It involves a return policy between retailers and manufacturers, where retailers receive monetary support for returning unsold products and subsidising some loss at the end of the selling season. This policy can improve supply chain coordination and benefit both retailers and suppliers. It also occurs between consumers and retailers in five dimensions, which are explained in this chapter. The return policies can attract more consumers and create more loyal customers, reduce consumer risks, increase demand, lower transaction costs, and increase customer value. However, research from a profitability perspective suggests that return policies may not maximise profitability. Reusing and recycling practices in the global fashion industry vary across different cases. The development of information technology contributes to the sustainability of fashion e-retailing and effective reverse logistics. In this chapter, the concept of reverse logistics, its procedures, and processes, challenges, growth areas, and sustainable practices to be incorporated into reverse logistics, various brands focusing on reverse logistics, and emerging opportunities in reverse logistics to ensure sustainability in apparel retailing are discussed.