The point of no return - En kvalitativ studie om Sustainable Return Management

Sammanfattning: In the fashion industry, return rates are considerably higher online compared to physical stores. Lately, return policies have gathered increased practical and academic attention. Mainly in terms of maximizing profitability, increasing loyalty and dealing with non-profitable customer behaviour such as serial returners. Although much is known about Return Management (RM) and online return policies, few empirical studies have examined the importance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) with regards to RM. The vast academic interest of sustainability in reverse logistics has not yet been extended to the literature on RM. The purpose of this thesis is to generate insights regarding how retailers (on a more strategic level) prevent returns and work with sustainability in the early stages of RM. With a qualitative approach, including 26 observations of retailers' websites and seven in-depth interviews, this study seeks to answer the following research questions: (1) For fashion retailers, what does the strategic decision making-process look like? (2) Which internal/external factors affect decision making regarding Sustainable Return Management? (3) What distinguishes retailers with a Sustainable Return Management compared to retailers with a less Sustainable Return Management? The findings show that the strategic process in practice is complex and is affected by both internal and external influences and motivations. Whereby companies with a more sustainable profile regarding returns make improvements to their strategies more frequently. Secondly, these companies tend to be more motivated to implement Sustainable Return Management (SRM) due to external factors. Third, companies with a SRM tend to be more concerned about institutional norms and thereby comply with CSR initiatives in their RM. Finally, although these companies aim to make returns more sustainable they tend to offer customers lenient return policies and free returns alternatives. These insights contribute to fulfilling the existing lack of knowledge in literature regarding sustainability and RM.