from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
Research in reverse logistics was previously focused mainly on manufacturing enterprises and on tangible reverse flows. However, with steady increasing proportion of services in GDP and with servitization of products, direction of further research in reverse logistics could aim on service sector and on intangible reverse flows, i.e. on information and especially on knowledge. The concept of gathering information from and about customers is not new and has been investigated by marketing researchers for a long time. Nevertheless, information about (dis)satisfaction of customers, their experience with products or complaints was gathered mainly in order to increase satisfaction, improve the experience or reduce the number of complaints. As one of the main purposes of reverse logistics is to reduce reverse flows, among others faulty products or services, this can be done by designing better products or services. However, companies need to obtain knowledge from customers in order to innovate products or services. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to introduce a conceptual framework the will help to analyze the current research that focuses on using knowledge from customers to reduce reverse flows. Using the designed framework, further research project will be introduced and briefly discussed.
Keywords: Reverse logistics, customer knowledge management, information, conceptual framework© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.