Examining the Antecedents of Return Policy Leniency in eCommerce

As eCommerce has become widespread, the challenge of successfully navigating the returns process has grown perilous. The product returns issue is even more difficult for microenterprises that sell unique or custom products with fewer resources. The authors examined the impact of the antecedents of return policy leniency, specifically economic and social success factors. Using a web crawler over a 24-week period, the authors collected and analyzed data for a sample of 781 shops from Etsy, an eCommerce platform. Results indicate that the well-studied factor of sales, in addition to a new social factor – community dialogue – impacts an Etsy shop’s return policy leniency.