Emerging technology-enabled e-retailer returns processes: Buy-Online-Return-In-Store and e-retailer performance

Purpose “Buy-Online-Return-In-Store” (BORIS) cross-channel returns is a notable tactic e-retailers use to attract consumers. Yet, the approach may create operational challenges, motivating concerns regarding its overall impact. This study provides empirical evidence on associations between use of BORIS and e-retailer performance, while also exploring interactions with same-channel free return shipping policies and two promotion tactics (i.e. social media use, sponsored search). Design/methodology/approach Using annual data (2013–2019) for the Top 1,000 e-retailers in North America, we employ regressions, robustness checks and endogeneity corrections to examine associations between BORIS and four performance metrics: website sales, order conversion rates, average customer order value and website traffic. Findings Fixed-effect model results suggest offering BORIS to online customers provides a negligible direct benefit to website sales and no meaningful impact across performance metrics among pure e-retailers. For bricks-and-clicks e-retailers, BORIS interacts with free return shipping policies to weakly bolster average order value and website traffic. When sponsored search spend is low, BORIS lifts average order value but does not improve conversion rates. Conversely, BORIS drives incremental website traffic via tactical synergies with sponsored search. Endogeneity-corrected random-effect estimates are broadly consistent and further reveal that e-retailers offering BORIS for competitive purposes may experience additional significant consequences from social media moderation. Originality/value The study contributes to research by theorizing potential performance impacts of BORIS use and finding empirical outcomes that motivate questions about its overall effectiveness. The nuanced findings show BORIS can provide scope-specific benefits under certain conditions. For e-retail managers, the findings translate anecdotal evidence about the importance of BORIS returns into empirical evidence that BORIS returns policies can matter, yet for some metrics, may exhibit only weak associations with e-retailer performance.