eROS

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Project title: Expectation-related returns in online shopping - forming and changing expectations of products ordered online

Duration: February 2022 to December 2024

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

Funding institution: University of Kassel as part of the Central Research Fund (ZFF project)

Summary: Online shopping has steadily gained in importance in recent decades, a trend that has been reinforced by the coronavirus pandemic. However, shopping via online channels comes with considerable disadvantages for suppliers, the environment and, last but not least, for consumers. Suppliers have to bear considerable additional costs for (return) transport and the 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 that cause consumers to return a product, this is often due to unfulfilled expectations. This is due to the essential problem of online shopping that the goods cannot be inspected in real life via various sensory organs before ordering, but consumers are dependent on their imagination, which is expressed in expectations of "what the goods will be like".

This is where this project comes in. The aim is to investigate how consumers form expectations of products in online stores based on typical information about them 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 aims to contribute to reducing the high return rates in online retail.

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 return 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