What if You Could Reduce Returned Products With Just Some Lines of Text?

Smart Green Nudging: making more money while helping the planet

Photo by Malcolm Choong 鍾声耀 on Unsplash.

This article is based on original research published in the Marketing Science academic journal. The research paper was authored by Moritz von Zahn, Kevin Bauer, Cristina Mihale-Wilson, Johanna Jagow, myself, and Oliver Hinz.

Imagine this: You’re managing an online fashion store, grappling with a common yet costly challenge: product returns. Every time a customer decides to send back an item, it chips away at your bottom line, complicates logistics, and increases environmental waste. Now, picture a solution that not only reduces returns but also enhances sustainability, without having a negative effect on revenue. Sounds like a dream, right?

In a collaboration with researchers from Goethe University Frankfurt and a major fashion e-commerce retailer, we have seen that that dream might just be a reality. We combined the concept of “Green Nudging” with cutting-edge machine learning, with the aim of contributing a new approach in the spirit of “Better Marketing for a Better World” (Chandy et al., 2021). Our study demonstrates how simple, smart interventions could transform e-commerce for the better (von Zahn et al., 2024).