Reverse logistics : systematic literature review vs companies' perspective

Abstract

The Reverse Logistic is actual and very attractive field of research due to potentials of value recovery from the used products, legislations and directives about environmental and consumer laws and social responsibilities (Varadinov, 2013; Pokharel and Mutha, 2009). This is a research area that has received special attention by academic community (researchers, students and teachers) along the years spotlighting the importance of use different strategies to manage the reverse flows of products and their environmental impact. The aim of this paper is, on first stage, to describe and analyze the research articles on Reverse Logistic, published during the last decade and, on second stage, to analyze and characterize the Portuguese companies’ perspective, based on three aspects: the concept, the returns and the environmental impact of Reverse Logistic strategies. A total of 89 papers published between January 2004 and April 2014 are selected and reviewed from Elsevier database. The papers are then analyzed on different issues: the methodology, the origin of the papers and others relevant aspects of the research. Furthermore, and based on the previous literature review, this paper presents and describes the methodology used to study the perspectives of different Portuguese companies – case study using semi-structured interviews.