| dc.description.abstract | In this thesis, returns of clothing bought online are researched. The background of this is an increasing amount of clothing being ordered online and returned for various reasons. As many online retailers sell products with free, no-hassle returns, it is easy for consumers to order anything they want to try on or see in person and return as much as they like, with little to no personal consequences. However, this has a large cost for retailers who must deal with complex reverse logistics, as well as the environmental impact of shipping and sending products back and forth, which sometimes leads to items getting destroyed instead as it of-ten is cheaper. Although there is a lot of research on the status of this and a lot of research on consumer behaviours, there is little connecting the two, examining what, in particular, can be done to mitigate the issue. This thesis attempts to answer what can be done to reduce the return rate of clothing bought online and the financial and environmental impact of re-turns for clothing bought online.
This thesis has a sequential exploratory design, starting with a qualitative stage using grounded theory development, followed by a quantitative stage testing the generated theory through an online questionnaire distributed to a large sample of U.S. consumers. In addition, it builds on existing research, such as The Theory of Planned Behaviour, in an attempt to produce a research model and find the independent variables that explain return volume.
Key findings are that returns handed back to a physical store can reduce the financial and environmental impact of returns compared to sending clothing back by mail. The research model, therefore, differs between these two types of returns. However, it does find that shopping volume is the strongest determinant for both sent and physical returns. Additional-ly, the knowledge among consumers on the topic seems to be low, and socially responsible consumers surprisingly have higher sent returns, but the same physical returns. Normative influences also explain return behaviour, however, for sent returns, it is personal norms, while for physical returns it is not, but rather one's subjective opinion of others' norms. | en_US |
