In recent years, government regulation or pressure from environmental agencies has forced companies to begin to focus on an area that is not one of their core competencies. It has not been possible to justify a large investment in improving reverse logistics systems and capabilities. Some have been able to see it as a “win-win” game by developing strategies mentioned previously such as good corporate citizenship and recapturing value and recovering assets.
Overall, in many companies, there has been management inattention and the lack of importance of reverse logistics especially handling returns and non-salable items, resulting in restrictive policies in this regard. This may be in part due to not wanting their returns being used to cannibalize existing sales. Recently, there seems to be a trend toward reducing or eliminating restrictive policies and attempting to handle returns more effectively in order to recover value from what can be a valuable resource.