Inventory control with product returns: The impact of imperfect information

Product returns are characterized by considerable uncertainty oil time and quantity. In the literature oil inventory management for product return environments best forecasts of future returns are associated with methods that use the most information regarding product return history. In practice, however, data is often scarce and unreliable, while forecasts based oil historical data, reliable or not, arc never perfect. In this paper we therefore investigate the impact of imperfect information with respect to the return process oil inventory management performance. We show that in the case of imperfect information the most informed method does not necessarily lead to best performance. The results have relevant implications regarding investments in product return information systems. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.