Many consumers who shop online prefer to return items to brick-and-mortar stores rather than mail them back.

This is according to a new study, where researchers assessed a new practice called return partnership, in which online retailers partner with retailers with physical stores to offer offline returns. They conclude that this arrangement can benefit both online and store retailers, though businesses should be careful to choose the right partners.

The study, by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Washington (UW), has been submitted for publication.

“Retailers are increasingly adopting a variety of ways to return products to cater to customers’ preferences,” explains Soo-Haeng Cho, IBM Professor of Operations Management and Strategy at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon, who co-authored the study. “These new approaches can be a win-win for online sellers and stores.”

To reduce problems for consumers who want to return goods without having to package and mail them, online retailers (e.g. Amazon) have begun to partner with firms that own a network of physical stores (e.g. Kohl’s) so customers can drop off returns of their online purchases. The partnerships usually do not involve direct monetary payment to the store retailers. The store retailers benefit from purchases made during customers’ visits to stores and online retailers save on shipping costs (the retailer collects and ships multiple returned items from a physical store, which is less costly than individual mail-in returns).

In this study, researchers examined the incentives of online retailers and store retailers in this unique partnership. Cho and his team constructed a model with an online retailer and a store retailer in which customers had several options for buying and returning goods. The study compared the expected profit of the retailers before and after a return partnership was formed and identified when both retailers benefitted from the partnership.

Among the study’s findings:

• Online retailers benefitted from shifting returns to a cost-effective channel, and store retailers benefitted from having more people in their stores.
• Return partnerships can occur with no direct financial transaction between the online and store retailers; the partnership can work when the incentive for the two retailers is based only on how it affects consumer behavior. 
• Such partnerships can feature store partners that operate few stores but offer products similar to those of online retailers, or those that have a large store network but offer differentiated products.
• Online retailers that offer convenient online shopping and lenient returns are best poised to benefit from return partnerships. Online retailers with strict return policies (e.g., high restocking fees) should carefully examine the return rate increasing effects of entering a partnership. 
• Firms should choose their partners to ensure the offline return service benefits their overall business. For example, an online retailer and a store retailer with comparable products have incentives to partner only if the number of stores is not too large because consumers may be swayed to return to stores by the possibility of finding replacements for whatever product they are returning. This would lead to more consumers opting to return their online purchases, which hurts the online retailer’s profit.

“By modeling consumers’ purchase and return decisions and their impact on retailers’ sales, our work provides insights into the types of online retailers that should form partnerships,” says Leela Nageswaran, Assistant Professor of Operations Management at UW’s Foster School of Business, who co-authored the study.

“Attempts to forge return partnerships with store retailers must emphasize the sales boost from returning customers,” adds Elina Hwang, Associate Professor of Information Systems at UW’s Foster School of Business, who co-authored the study. 

The use of congruent messages and emojis when promoting tourist destinations on social media leads to greater user attention. This strategy helps users to process the information effectively and reduces their cognitive effort. More specifically, the use of emojis in online messages about tourism destinations facilitates processing and reduces ambiguity, especially when the recipients encounter content with low levels of congruence.

This is according to a research – “The effect of online message congruence, destination-positioning, and emojis on users’ cognitive effort and affective evaluation” – that was published in the Journal of Destination Marketing & Management.

The study, which was carried out at the University of Granada’s Mind, Brain and Behaviour Research Centre (CIMCYC), consisted of an experiment using eye-tracking techniques on 60 users of the social network Facebook. These individuals underwent a series of experimental procedures in which the researchers manipulated the level of congruence between the messages of those posting and the users, the use or omission of emojis in the content, and the way in which the tourist destination was positioned in the media (natural environment, gastronomy, hotels, sun and beach).

The UGR research team, which includes Beatriz García Carrión, Francisco Muñoz Leiva, Salvador del Barrio García and Lucia Porcu, point out that the study “clearly illustrates the benefits in terms of the effectiveness of using congruent messages in marketing communications in general, and especially in digital communications via social media, as well as how the use of emojis contributes to improving users’ information processing, increasing their attention and reducing the cognitive effort involved. Moreover, congruent messages not only facilitate users’ information processing, but also improve their affective evaluation — a crucial aspect when it comes to making a decision on a tourist destination.”

The key findings included:

• Importance of maintaining a high level of congruence in the information they convey through social media. As the researchers explain: “This involves systematically reviewing and managing comments across all communication channels to identify any comments that do not align with the destination’s desired positioning, with a view to mitigating potential negative effects.”
• Pictorial representations (emojis) significantly enhance the overall comprehension of the information. However, the study did not find a significant impact of emojis on the formation of affective evaluations.
• Tourism managers should focus on information related to the destination’s gastronomy and natural environment, rather than more conventional aspects such as sun and beach facilities or hotel offerings, as the former attract more attention and are perceived more favorably, even under low levels of congruence.

The research findings suggest a shift in the preferences of potential consumers towards more nature-based tourism. “Therefore, tourism managers should place greater emphasis on communicating aspects related to the environment and sustainability of the tourist destination in their social media posts, thereby reaping benefits in terms of visual attention and affective evaluations,” the researchers stressed.

New research in the Global Strategy Journal has bad news for companies struggling with corruption, discrimination, or sweatshops in their supply chain: corporate misconduct demonstrably hurts international sales. Consumers and investors increasingly read about unethical business practices globally and demonstrate their displeasure locally.

“Socially irresponsible acts transcend geographic boundaries and negatively affect foreign subsidiary performance,” said Nuruzzaman Nuruzzaman of the University of Manchester, one of the study’s authors.

Nuruzzaman, along with co-authors Erin E. Makarius and Debmalya Mukherjee of the University of Akron and Ajai Gaur of Rutgers, monitored the sales growth of 335 subsidiaries in 109 countries over nine years. They charted the growth alongside the number of corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) incidents reported against parent companies. Social irresponsibility hurt subsidiaries’ sales whether incidents occurred internationally or in the parent company’s home country.

“We weren’t looking at incidents that were local to the subsidiary,” said Makarius. “We wanted to explore how much negative news spreads globally and how stakeholders react to incidents beyond their borders. The data shows the location of misconduct no longer seems to matter. There’s still significant negative impact.”

The study also explored whether creating distractions could buffer the consequences of a parent company’s bad behavior. The researchers compared two methods of strategic noise: marketing campaigns and product innovations. Promotions, contests, and sales showed little ability to curb reputational damage, but introducing two or more product or service innovations could flip sales growth in a positive direction despite CSI incidents.    

“Perhaps consumers perceive marketing campaigns as hollow responses,” Mukherjee said. “Because innovation is more costly, it may create a stronger positive impact.”

While the study demonstrates that subsidiaries do have agency against negative media coverage of their parents’ activities, the authors emphasize that the larger takeaway concerns the potential fallout from CSI. Managers at parent companies and their subsidiaries abroad should be aware that misconduct even in distant locations can quickly impact international sales performance.

“Given the adverse impact of CSI on global performance that this study shows, global corporations should strive to uphold and implement strong ethical and social responsibility standards throughout their global operations,” Gaur said. “Moreover, they should prioritize transparent communications with subsidiaries so they can quickly mitigate the negative impact of socially irresponsible activities.”

To read the full context of the study and its statistical modeling methods, access the full paper available in the Global Strategy Journal.