The impact of the package opening process on product returns

Abstract

High product return rates are an increasingly pressing challenge for many e-retailers around the world. To address this problem, this paper offers a new perspective by focusing on the critical moment of the package-opening process. Going beyond previous research, which has primarily focused on website information and the product itself, we examine the effects of the outside appearance (i.e., the color of the delivery package) and contents of the delivery package (i.e., extra gifts, coupons, and preprinted return labels) on consumer return behavior. Our findings across two experimental studies and an observational field study show that a well-considered package design, including colorful packaging and extra gifts, significantly lowers consumers' return intentions and actual returns. We also explore the process of consumers' cognitive-affective reactions after opening a delivery package. During this two-stage reaction process, pleasure plays a crucial role in the consumer's return choice.

New insights in online fashion retail returns from a customers’ perspective and their dynamics

“…While some studies model different scenarios based on researchers' assumptions (Difrancesco et al 2018;Dutta et al 2020;Letizia et al 2018;Li et al 2019;Ülkü and Gürler 2018) or founded on observable online shopping data (Gallino and Moreno 2018;Hjort and Lantz 2016;Lohse et al 2017;Minnema et al 2016;Petersen and Kumar 2015;Rao et al 2018;Sahoo et al 2018;Samorani et al 2019;Walsh et al 2016), we analyze measures of return avoidance and averting, by focusing on the customer's voice; as finally, customers' evaluation contributes to a more or less successful implementation of these measures. Thus, we conducted a literature review about recent articles (published between 2015 and 2020) that either include "product return", "return prevention", "reverse Pei and Paswan (2018) SEM (n = 400) Post-purchase Zhou et al (2018) ANOVA and SEM (n = 320; n = 108) Post-purchase logistics", or "return policy" in common scientific databases. After screening them by abstracts, we highlight those incorporating customers' viewpoints derived from survey-based investigations.…”

Segmentation of the Young Elderly Based on Technology Readiness

“…As already mentioned above, most of the prior studies on the antecedents of product return behaviour in the context of online shopping have focused on a very productcentric, retailer-centric, or order-centric perspective by examining how product return behaviour is affected by the factors related to the ordered product, the retailer from whom it is ordered, or the particular order transaction. Some examples of these factors are inventory availability, order delivery reliability, and expected order delivery timeliness (Rao, Rabinovich & Raju, 2014), assortment size and order size (Yan & Cao, 2017), retailer reputation (Walsh, Albrecht, Kunz & Hofacker, 2016), shipping and return fees (Lantz & Hjort, 2013;Lepthien & Clement, 2019;Shehu, Papies & Neslin, 2020), product reviews (Minnema, Bijmolt, Gensler & Wiesel, 2016;Sahoo, Dellarocas & Srinivasan, 2018;Wang, Ramachandran & Sheng, 2021), as well as package opening process (Zhou, Hinz & Benlian, 2018).…”

Measuring and eliminating the bullwhip in closed loop supply chains using control theory and Internet of Things

“…The contradictory findings suggest that further empirical investigation is required in order to more fully understand the presence of the bullwhip effect within CLSC. There may be a number of causes for this discrepancy in the literature, including different bullwhip effect constructs and divergent perspectives regarding CLSC characteristics (Adenso-Díaz et al 2012); it could be due to distinct modelling assumptions (Cannella et al 2016), or different CLSC structure and configuration (Zhou et al 2018). Still, for products as good as new, as regards quality, which is what this study examines -it is not clear whether the return rates (or yields) mitigate or amplify the bullwhip effect.…”