Abstract
Shipping is one of the costliest elements of online retail; it is also a sore topic for consumers. There is still relatively little or no research that examines the relative role of shipping and return-shipping costs on consumers’ purchasing intentions. In this research, we examine two questions: what is the relative role of shipping and return-shipping costs on consumers’ purchase intentions. Secondly, how does gender moderate the relationships between the above costs and subsequent purchasing intentions? Data was collected using Amazon Mechanical Turk from respondents all over the US. The findings show that shipping costs impact purchasing decisions for both expensive and inexpensive products. However, return-shipping affects the purchasing intentions for costly products only, more so for males than for females. In all, the study makes a unique contribution by examining the shipping and return-shipping cost questions in online buying that are relatively understudied so far.
Recommended Citation
Bansal, Gaurav and Nies, Emma, "Shipping and Return-Shipping Costs do not Cost the Same: The Role of Gender and Product Price in Online Buying" (2018). MWAIS 2018 Proceedings. 2.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/mwais2018/2