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Tis the season for givingand that means tis the season for shopping. Maybe youll splurge on a Black Friday or Cyber Monday deal, thinking, Ill just return it if they dont like it. But before you click purchase, its worth knowing that many retailers have quietly tightened their return policies in recent years. As a marketing professor, I study how retailers manage the flood of returns that follow big shopping events like these, and what it reveals about the hidden costs of convenience. Returns might seem like a routine part of doing business, but theyre anything but trivial. According to the National Retail Federation, returns cost U.S. retailers almost $890 billion each year. Part of that staggering figure comes from returns fraud, which includes everything from consumers buying and wearing items once before returning thema practice known as wardrobingto more deceptive acts such as falsely claiming an item never arrived. Returns also drain resources because they require reverse logistics: shipping, inspecting, restocking, and often repackaging items. Many returned products cant be resold at full price or must be liquidated, leading to lost revenue. Processing returns also adds labor and operational expenses that erode profit margins. How e-commerce transformed returns While retailers have offered return options for decades, their use has expanded dramatically in recent years, reflecting how much shopping habits have changed. Before the rise of e-commerce, shopping was a sensory experience: Consumers would touch fabrics, try on clothing, and see colors in natural light before buying. If something didnt work out, customers brought it back to the store, where an associate could quickly inspect and restock it. Online shopping changed all that. While e-commerce offers convenience and variety, it removes key sensory cues. You cant feel the material, test the fit, or see the true color. The result is uncertainty, and with uncertainty comes higher rates of returns. One analysis by Capital One suggests that the rate for returns is almost three times higher for online purchases than for in-store purchases. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the move toward online shopping went into overdrive. Even hesitant online shoppers had to adapt. To encourage purchases, many retailers introduced or expanded generous return policies. The strategy worked to boost sales, but it also created a culture of returning. In 2020, returns accounted for 10.6% of total U.S. retail sales, nearly double the prior year, according to the National Retail Federation data. By 2021, that had climbed to 16.6%. Unable to try things on in stores, consumers began ordering multiple sizes or styles, keeping one and sending the rest back. The behavior was rational from a shoppers perspective but devastatingly expensive for retailers. The high cost of convenience Most supply chains are designed to move in one direction: from production to consumption. Returns reverse that flow. When merchandise moves backward, it adds layers of cost and complexity. In-store returns used to be simple: A customer would take an item back to the store, the retailer would inspect the product, and, if it was in good condition, it would go right back on the shelf. Online returns, however, are far more cumbersome. Products can spend weeks in transit and often cant be resoldby the time they arrive, they may be out of season, obsolete, or no longer in their original packaging. Logistics costs compound the problem. During the pandemic, consumers grew accustomed to free shipping. That means retailers now often pay twice: once to deliver the item and again to retrieve it. Now, in a post-pandemic world, retailers are trying to strike a balancemaintaining customer goodwill without sacrificing profitability. One solution is to raise prices, but especially today, with inflation in the headlines, shoppers are sensitive to price hikes. The other, more common approach is to tighten return policies. In practice, thats taken several forms. Some retailers have begun charging small flat fees for returns, even when a customer mails an item back at their own expense. For example, the direct-to-consumer retailer Curvy Sense offers customers unlimited returns and exchanges of an item for an initial $2.98 fee. Others have shortened their return windows. Over the summer, for example, beauty retailers Sephora and Ulta reduced their return window from 60 days to 30. Many brands now attach large, conspicuous do not remove tags to prevent consumers from wearing items and then sending them back. And increasingly, retailers are offering store credit rather than cash or credit card refunds, ensuring that returned sales at least stay within their company. Few retailers advertise these changes prominently. Instead, they appear quietly in the fine print of return policiespolicies that are now longer, more specific, and far less forgiving than they once were. As we head into the busiest shopping season of the year, its worth pausing before you click purchase. Ask yourself: Is this something I truly wantor am I planning to return it later? Whenever possible, shop in person and return in person. And if youre buying online, make sure you familiarize yourself with the return policy. Lauren Beitelspacher is a professor of marketing at Babson College. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Heres a common pattern in my house. See if it seems familiar to you. After my husband showers, he often forgets to put his dirty clothes in the hamper. This drives me batty, so I remind him to please pick them up. Again and again and again. Weve been married for 15 years now and the result of all my nagging appears to be exactly zilch. Half the time I go in the bathroom there is a ball of socks and underwear on the floor. My husband is an otherwise thoughtful and considerate guy. So whats going on? According to psychology research, the problem likely isnt him. Its my belief that nagging is an effective strategy to get another person to change their behavior. The psychology of why nagging doesnt work We have a perception that we wont get what we want from the other person, so we feel we need to keep asking in order to get it, psychologist Scott Wetzler explained to The Wall Street Journal. But rather than prompting change, nagging causes people to feel demeaned and withhold the desired behavior. The nagger then nags more and resentment builds. This dynamic can kill a romantic relationshipstudies find that, unsurprisingly, a lot of nagging is associated with low relationship satisfactionbut its equally useless between parents and kids, cofounders, or bosses and employees. So what works better to get someone to actually change their behavior? A new study has a suggestion. But, be warned, if youre stuck in a pattern of habitual nagging, it will probably feel counterintuitive. The jujitsu mind trick that actually changes behavior After years of low-level laundry conflict, I admit the last thing I feel inclined to do is thank my husband the one time in a dozen that his clothes end up in the hamper. But according to a new study out of the University of Toronto recently published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, when it comes to changing his behavior, gratitude would beat nagging. The research was conducted by psychologist Natalie Sisson and colleagues and consisted of three separate studies looking at the connection between expressions of gratitude and behavior change in couples. One study asked 151 couples to keep a daily diary of their interactions around some change sought by one member of the pair. These diaries showed that the more a member of the couple felt their partner was grateful for their efforts to change, the more likely they were to make further adjustments. After nine months, partners who felt their better halves were most grateful had made the biggest changes. Taken together, all the findings suggest that, if you ask your partner to change something about themselves or their behavior, and they say they are willing to try, being grateful will help them to develop their own motivation to make that change, making it more likely to happen, writes the British Psychological Societys Research Digest, summing up the results. Easy to explain, harder to implement In some sense, thats intuitive. When you praise someone for their efforts, even if theyre minimal, they feel positive about you and themselves. When you nag them, the opposite happens. Which scenario do you think is more likely to result in someone putting in more effort? But my personal experience at least suggests that, in the heat of the moment, this jujitsu mind trickpraising faint signs of improvement even when you feel like complainingcan be hard to muster. The last thing I want to do when I finally spot one of my husbands socks in the hamper is to offer him kudos. Its hard not to think about the hundreds Ive had to deposit there before. If you care about effectiveness more than venting, though, psychology suggests this is the way to go. Positive reinforcement works best to train a puppy. It also apparently works best to train people. Bigging others up with gratitude is more likely to motivate them to change their behavior than tearing them down with nagging. Other tricks to help someone change their behavior What else can you do to help other people change their behavior? This isnt the first study to dig into ths question. Experts have other ideas that may complement a liberal application of gratitude. BJ Fogg, director of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford, has suggested catching a ride on the other persons motivational wave. When you notice the other party seems keen to make the desired change, step up and offer them concrete support. If you want someone in your life to exercise more, that could mean going to tour gyms with them when they express an interest. Or it could mean sitting down with your perpetually disorganized employee and walking them through a new calendar system when they come to you for help. Another idea, suggested by psychologist Devon Price, is digging into what barriers or obstacles might be preventing a person from changing. If my husbands laundry delinquency is a result of being rushed in the morning, maybe we could switch around some chores to ease his time crunch. If your colleague is putting off a task because of fear of failure, additional training or support will probably work better than scolding. Finally, time-use expert and author Laura Vanderkam says that, if you want others to change, you should first talk about your own self-improvement projects. If a direct report is struggling with time management, for instance, she advises walking them through your own diary as a way to get a conversation about tradeoffs and challenges started. Step one: Give up the nagging What all of these experts agree on is that if you really want someone to change their behavior, nagging might relieve some of your frustration. But its not going to actually work. Try gratitude, support, and open dialogue instead. By Jessica Stillman The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com. This article originally appeared in Fast Companys sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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E-Commerce
Caralynn Nowinski Collens, Ramille Shah, and Adam Jakus spent years developing an innovative technology to regenerate injured bone. The results, they thought, were . . . okay. The company they founded, Dimension Bio, received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration for its approach: providing a 3D-printed lattice or “scaffold” for new bone to grow in. However, it didn’t form new bone fast enough to compete with established treatment methods, such as transplanting a patients own bone tissue. But Collens, Dimension’s CEO, sees the experience as a net positive, validating the companys technology and processes with the FDA. That could help the Chicago-based startup work toward a more-ambitious goal in about three years: building a human liver using its scaffold and donated cells. It would actually be a miniature, simplified version of the organ, meant to function well enough to keep someone alive. That could provide breathing room for an injured or diseased liver to heal, or buy time for the patient to receive a transplant. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 52,222 people died of liver disease and cirrhosis in 2023. The death rate from cirrhosis increased 26.4% from 2000 to 2019, per the National Institutes of Health. (Cirrhosis is most often the result result of fat buildup, viral hepatitis B and C, or long-term alcohol abuse, though there are other causes.) “The mortality rates are very high when a patient can’t get a transplant. And so that’s where we’re looking to be able to provide [help],” Collens says. [Photo: Dimension Bio] Reprinting Older Science Building a scaffold for cells to grow in is not novel, Collens concedes, nor is the material the company uses: poly lactic-co-glycolic acid. PLGA is found throughout everyday medicine, including in dissolving sutures, dermal fillers, and tiny capsules to deliver drugs to the body. Dimension Bios innovation is in how it utilizes 3D printing to build the PLGA scaffold, part of an overall system its dubbed BioNidum. [When] we put that in the body, what happens is it gets new blood vessels very quickly, and that’s unusual,” says Collens, noting that typically the immune system walls off the foreign body and prevents blood vessels from growing easily. Collens attributes the success to a scaffold structure that provides pores of different sizes, designed to help cells move into the scaffold easily and not provoke a strong immune response. The larger pores allow the blood vessels to grow into the new tissue. The company was originally called Dimension Inx, a bit of wordplay. “We make biomaterial inks,” Collens says. The technology grew out of Northwestern Universitys TEAM lab, short for tissue engineering and additive manufacturing (a fancy name for 3D printing), founded by Shah in 2010. At the time, Collens was running an advanced manufacturing innovation center in Chicago, part of a national network of institutes funded by the federal government and companies including Microsoft and Lockheed Martin. In 2015, one of the board members sent Collens an email, “and he said, I just saw this rock star young faculty member present, and I think you should meet her,” she recalls. Shah, a materials science professor at the time, and then-graduate student Jakus founded Dimension Inx in 2016, and Collens joined as a cofounder and CEO 2019. Jakus left the company in 2023. Shah serves as chief science officer. She, Collens, and three other women account for all voting members on Dimension’s board of directors. The overall staff is about “70% diverse,” Collens says. “I’ll say it’s intentional only in the fact that we have a strong belief, and it’s one of the values of the company, that diversity leads to better outcomes and better innovation.” The company raised $20.52 million through seed rounds in 2020 and 2021, and a series A in 2023. Lead investors include KdT Ventures and Prime Movers Lab. Another major investor is Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, which focuses on startups outside top investment regions and doesnt typically fund biotech. The company is planning what it calls a series A2 funding round in 2026, with the goal of raising up to $50 million. Boning Up on the Technology CMFlexthe companys earlier bone repair productis considered a “medical device, requiring a less-stringent FDA review than medications or Dimensions upcoming mini-liver. Thats because CMFlex is just the scaffold for the patients own cells to grow into, rather than to introduce new cells. Bone provided the “lowest hanging fruit,” for Dimension to prove out its technology, Collens says, because its a naturally regenerative tissue. “We were putting this matrix or scaffold inside to serve as a guide or an instigator to get new bone.” The FDA didnt require human trials for this medical device. Although it had success in animal studies, Dimension chose to do a pilot program in patients before making the product available. “We have lots of examples of being able to create bone in patients and in animals,” Collens says, adding, however, “We didn’t do it fast enough for the structure that’s neededand the structure meaning the hardness to withstand the forces that bone allows you to withstand.” Dimension eventually decided working with tissue would be more impactful, and decided not to go to market with CMFlex. Moving to soft tissue and then organs was part of the original pitch deck to investors. The company is investigating restoring function in ovaries, for instance. It also succeeded in growing insulin-producing cells seeded in its scaffold in diabetic mice, which could pave the way for treating diabetes in humans. But that area was already a crowded market, Collens says. “We ended up focusing on liver failure for a variety of reasons, but probably one of the biggest reasons is it’s a huge problem with no good alternative, except for liver transplant,” she says. Dimensions plan is to grow a small, simplified liver under the skin as a temporary fix until either the full liver can recover or the patient can get a transplant. “I think that’s a good way to go, says James Anderson, a retired professor of pathology, macromolecular science, and biomedical engineering who taught at Case Western Reserve University for more than 40 years. Anderson, who is not associated with Dimension Bio, reviewed its research and was impressed with the methods and results. The liver, he says, is not only a worthy target for regenerative medicine; its also a conducive one. “They picked an organ that can reproduce itself,” he says. But even a mini-organ is much more complicated than bone. “It’s a fundamentally ifferent type of product, when we’re talking about putting cells on a scaffold,” Collens says. In mice whose livers were deliberately damaged, the company reports that it increased the survival rate by more than 70% after seeding with liver cells from mice and humans. That required hundreds of millions of cells. But according to Collens, building the miniature human liver could require seeding the scaffold with 5 billion to 20 billion cells. For humans, Dimension will use stem cells to produce those billions of liver cells. But first come tests in rats and pigs. The companys timetable is aggressive. It aims to start clinical trials in humans in 2028. The next question might be: Why not grow an entire liver replacement? That seems to be, at best, a very distant goal. Anderson is not sure its possible, given the complex structure of the full organ. Collens says Dimension Bio is not working on that lofty goal, for now. But she doesnt rule it out. “I think we’re at a really interesting inflection point . . . of this convergence of engineering and biology, where we can actually engineer biological systems that support function that we couldn’t do before.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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