The Effects of Consumer Demographics and Payment Method Preference on Product Return Frequency and Reasons in Online Shopping

Abstract

In online shopping, product returns are very common. In order to reduce them, one must first understand who are making them and why are they being made. In this study, we aim to address these questions by examining product return behaviour from a consumer-centric rather than the more traditional product-centric, retailer-centric, and order-centric perspectives. More specifically, we focus on the effects of four demographic characteristics of consumers (i.e., gender, age, education, and income) as well as their payment method preference on their product return frequency and product return reasons. As the data, we use the responses from 560 Finnish online consumers, which were collected with an online survey and are analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. We find gender, age, payment method preference, and average online shopping frequency to affect average product return frequency, whereas product return reasons were found to be affected by only gender and average product return frequency.