UA Study: Strict Return Policies Can Cost Retailers

Attempting to reduce product-return costs, retail companies have clamped down on return policies.

But, paradoxically, shrinking the window of time in which returns can be made results in more returns, according to a new paper co-authored by University of Arizona assistant professor of marketing Narayan Janakiraman and professor of management Lisa Ordóñez published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

Existing research focuses on developing models to determine when policies should be lenient and when they should be restrictive.

In their paper, Janakiraman and Ordóñez take a behavioral approach to determine how return deadlines and required effort influence a consumer's decision to return or keep items. They designed a series of live experiments involving student returns to the UA BookStores to test these interactions.
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