Efficient Product Return Management via Customer Segmentation? A Purchase Behavior Approach in Fashion E-Commerce

摘要

Since the rise of e-commerce, online shopping behavior and its underlying decision-making process have been in the focus of research for more than a decade now. Several constructs have been adapted from offline shopping environments, such as customer segmentation approaches (Kim & Eastin, 2011; Naseri & Elliott, 2011; Rohm & Swaminathan, 2004). Customer segmentation has helped to target and manage online segments more specifically (Girard et al., 2003; Levin et al., 2005). Despite the unrivaled growth of e-commerce, the costs of winning customers through online marketing as well as the costs of operating the infrastructure are still high and are a major challenge for profitable businesses. Especially returns management can be expensive for e-commerce retailers (Rogers & Lambert, 2002; Seidel, 2011). While research on online marketing and online shopping behavior is broad and detailed, research on e-commerce product returns is yet sparse (Foscht et al., 2013; Mollenkopf et al., 2007; Wood, 2001). No researcher has extended the established customer segments from shopping behavior approaches towards product returns in order to analyze the return behavior from a post-purchase behavior perspective. This could lead to a much more segment-specific management, and thus to optimized return rates for e-commerce retailers.