Others have mentioned market forces, but I don't think that's the only reason. Personally, when buying online there are a lot of things that go wrong at little

Others have mentioned market forces, but I don't think that's the only reason. Personally, when buying online there are a lot of things that go wrong at little (or no) fault of the consumer. Some examples are ambiguous (or missing!) info in a description, details or measurements that are slightly (or very) inaccurate, quality that is unacceptable but difficult to differentiate online (often because aggressively positive marketing), etc, etc. If these weren't balanced out with liberal return policies, then I wouldn't buy nearly as much online. Literally anything over a few dozen dollars would start being suspect for me. I think this is also the case for many other people. Really, until Amazon started their incredibly pro-consumer policies and other venues followed suite, I really didn't purchase much online.