Abstract
Abstract
One. Introduction
Two. Literature Review
Two. Literature Review
Abstract
Returns are the structural weak point of fashion e-commerce. In the United States alone, twenty twenty-five retail returns totaled eight hundred forty-nine point nine billion dollars, with online return rates reaching nineteen point three percent, and fashion sits at the top of that distribution. Yet most merchants still process every return through a single default path on platforms such as Shopify: the customer requests a refund, receives a label, sends the garment back, and the transaction ends as a loss. Each return processed this way represents lost revenue plus an outbound reverse-logistics cost, and these losses now compound as Extended Producer Responsibility legislation in Europe begins to add the end-of-life cost of discarded garments to the merchant's balance sheet.
This thesis examines an emerging alternative. Returnflows is a SaaS platform that replaces the default Shopify refund flow with a three-option choice architecture: exchange, store credit with a bonus, or refund. The analytical framework combines three streams. Digital nudging and choice-architecture theory explains how the interface guides the return decision. Cognitive dissonance and self-determination theory interpret why consumers respond to the design, and whether their choice remains genuinely autonomous. Circular economy rebound theory tests whether redirecting returns away from refund produces environmental gains that survive downstream consumer behaviour.
The research design is an abductive case study grounded in pragmatism. Empirical material comprises quantitative platform data from a Danish fashion merchant covering December twenty twenty-three to March twenty twenty-six, a semi-structured interview with the Returnflows founder, and secondary industry and regulatory sources.
Three findings anchor the analysis. First, the choice architecture shifts the outcome distribution from a near-universal refund baseline to sixty-two point two seven percent refund, thirty point zero eight percent exchange, and seven point six five percent store credit by return value. Of seven point three two million DKK in total return value, three point four five million DKK is retained, a retained ratio of forty-seven point one six percent. Second, seventy-seven point five percent of returns are size or fit related, which reframes the typical return as a variant-correction problem rather than a rejection of the purchase, and maps onto dissonance-reduction logic that predicts exchange as the psychologically cheapest resolution. Third, the environmental case is strongest where the rebound literature is weakest. Exchange replaces two reverse-logistics trips with one, draws from already-committed demand rather than stimulating new consumption, and feeds a data loop that reduces size driven returns upstream.
The conclusion is qualified. The choice architecture works as designed, the commercial case against the Shopify baseline is straightforward, and the sustainability case is net positive when limited to the exchange pathway. Rebound risk is real but structurally contained in the store credit pathway. Two factors bound the risk empirically: the twenty-seven-day average gift card usage window, suggesting purposeful rather than impulsive deployment, and the bounded demand structure of a post-purchase context, where the consumer's intent to own the product has already been settled.
The contribution is threefold, mapped to the HA(kom.) disciplines. To Communication, the thesis extends digital nudging theory into a post-purchase context that existing research has largely ignored. To Business Administration, it quantifies the strategic value of return redesign against the natural platform baseline and reframes returns as a revenue-retention mechanism. To Social Diagnostics, it examines consumer behaviour and environmental consequence in the same analytical frame, asking whether a design that resolves dissonance efficiently can do so without producing rebound downstream.