The Perfect Order: Are returns a customer right?

Let’s get back to the discussion of the definition of a customer: Are we talking about the customer as a business or the customer as a person?

If the customer is a business, then it is likely that the ability of the customer-buyer to return unsatisfactory goods to the vendor-seller is stipulated in the contractual relationship between the two supply chain partners. What makes the goods unacceptable would realistically constitute the inability of the goods to be used for their intended purpose; the goods are in some way not in their “right condition” for use or sale.

If the customer is a person (a consumer), the same rule of “right condition” applies. The consumer has a right to receive goods as they are represented and ready for use. The seller had the responsibility to ensure that the goods were in their “right condition” when they left the warehouse or distribution center and were packaged to survive the shipping and handling process. All that being said, does the consumer have a right to return in today’s e-commerce business environment?

We know the answer to the somewhat rhetorical question above: Yes, even if it is not a true “right” as defined by Dr. Marien, and even as some retailers are making it a bit more rigorous to return goods due to certain consumer abuse. The customer (consumer) isn’t always right, but returns have been used to attract consumers to buy without penalty yet not without there being a cost.

Part of the reason for returns is simply bad data: poor product images, a lack of detail in product descriptions, and inaccurate product sizes such as for apparel and footwear. Dirty data results in consumers purchasing multiple sizes of the same product to try on and return the ones that don’t fit, or to just buy-and-try without fear of losing money due to the absence of any sort of restrictive return policy. Laissez-faire return policies were used as leverage to attract consumers to buy, but the cost of these unrestricted return policies wasn’t always beneficial to the bottom line.

Consumer returns due to bad data aren’t necessarily a right, but they are a necessity and an expensive one at that for retailers. It can be less costly for a retailer to let the consumer keep the goods than to handle the logistics of the return in some circumstances, but this still doesn’t make it right. Improving the quality of the data will help alleviate unnecessary consumer buys and returns. Whether a company is selling directly via a D2C business model, or whether a company is a retail vendor selling B2B or B2C, focusing on quality product data reduces the supply chain costs associated with unnecessary returns. This makes consumers more satisfied because their initial product purchases are going to be more accurate more of the time. Isn’t that what a perfect order should be all about?

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