The Importance of Secondary Markets in the Changing Retail Landscape: A Longitudinal Study in the United States and China

Due to shifting consumer expectations and the growth in e-commerce, companies are flush with returned product and excess inventory. Many firms have turned to secondary market channels to disposition excess goods and capture a greater percentage of their value. However, the secondary market has not gained sufficient attention from supply chain management researchers. To understand how firms are using these alternative channels of disposition, we collected and analyzed longitudinal survey data (collected in 2014 and 2017) from the United States and China. We find that US firms generally utilize secondary markets for different reasons than their Chinese counterparts and have found more success. However, while the results suggest that US secondary markets are more mature than their Chinese counterparts, the gap between the two countries appears to be narrowing.