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Per the article, “free” shipping (and returns) incentivizes inefficient behavior. Instead of grouping your purchases and avoiding speculative purchases, you jus
by yojo 3y ago
Per the article, “free” shipping (and returns) incentivizes inefficient behavior. Instead of grouping your purchases and avoiding speculative purchases, you just buy anything you think you might like, whenever you think of it, and inefficiently ship things one at a time.
Even worse, the shoppers who are being thoughtful effectively subsidize the worst actors. My return rate for non-damaged goods is sub 1%, but I pay the “baked in” price of shipping for the average purchaser - the same rate as the person returning 99% of their orders.
- tedivm 3y agoDid the article really prove that though? The reason these extreme cases get so much press is because they're outliers, not because they're the normal thing everyone does.
- yojo 3y agoI don’t know that it proved anything, but it did say the average return rate for 2022 was 16.5%, which is at least an order of magnitude higher than mine and a pretty large inefficiency.