eROS

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Project title: Expectation-related returns in online shopping - formation and change of expectations for products ordered online

Duration: February 2022 to December 2024

Project Supervision: Ann-Catrin Pristl / Prof. Dr. Andreas Mann

Funding Institution: University of Kassel within the framework of the Central Research Fund (ZFF-Project)

Abstract: Online shopping has steadily gained in importance in recent decades, a trend that has been reinforced by the Corona pandemic. However, shopping via online channels is associated with considerable disadvantages for suppliers, the ecology and not least for consumers. Suppliers have to bear considerable additional costs for (return) transport, as well as reprocessing or disposal of returned goods. The environment is burdened by increasedCO2 emissions and a rising volume of waste. Consumers, in turn, experience both physical and monetary costs in addition to disappointment or dissatisfaction.

If we look at the reasons why consumers return a product, it is often due to unfulfilled expectations. This is due to the essential problem of online shopping, which is that the goods cannot be inspected in real life via various sensory organs before ordering, but consumers have to rely on their imagination, which is expressed in expectations of "what the goods will be like".

This is where the present project comes in. The aim is to investigate how consumers form expectations about products on the basis of typical information about them in online stores and how these expectations change over time until the goods arrive. The aim of the project is to create essential foundations for the subsequent derivation / investigation of concrete strategies for the presentation of goods in online stores and thus to derive recommendations for providers. In this way, the project is intended to make a contribution to reducing the high return rates in online retailing.

Publications

  • Pristl, A.-C., & Mann, A. (2023), "How I Find out What to Expect of a Product": Investigating the Consumers' Product Inspection Process in Forming Product Expectations in Online Shops. Proceedings of the European Marketing Academy, 52nd, (114306)
  • Mann, A. & Pristl, A.-C. (2023). Customer expectations and returns behavior in online shopping. In: German Dialog Marketing Association (DDV) (ed.), Dialog Marketing Perspectives 2022 / 2023 (pp. 101-124). Springer Fachmedien, Wiesbaden.
  • Mann, A., & Pristl, A.-C. (2022). Customer expectations. WISU - The study of economics, 51 (12), 1295-1300. 
  • Pristl, A.-C., & Mann, A. (2021). Returns in online shopping: Reasons, effects and implications for product presentation and communication in e-commerce. transfer - Zeitschrift für Kommunikation und  Markenmanagement, 67(4), 70-77 pdf