Thought Leadership: E-commerce & Returns

A Look at Men's Online Grocery-Shopping Behavior

With more men living alone, leading single-adult households with children or taking on their full share of family responsibilities, males are emerging more and more as the primary purchase decision-makers and shoppers.

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Embrace the Negative — Capitalize On Online Returns

Although the logistics burden of higher rates of e-commerce returns is not the happiest picture, the truth is that returns are neither a necessary evil nor indication of customer dissatisfaction.

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What Happens to Returns?

Get the inside scoop on what happens to products when they are returned to the store. We shared the details with CBS Sunday Morning's Rita Braver, check it out below!  

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How to Optimize Your Customer's Return Experience

The sense of urgency driven by today's digitally driven "culture of instant gratification" has created a demanding customer sentiment. They want free shipping on returns, prepaid return labels in the box with online purchases, and they often decide who they'll buy from based on which seller makes returns the easiest.

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The Dynamics of Food Donation

It's estimated that more than one-third of the U.S. food supply goes to waste. It's incumbent upon all of us with the power to help make more food available to more people to play our full part in addressing this serious and compelling issue. Inmar, as one the nation's leading returns logistics providers, enables delivery of 15 to 20 million pounds of usable product — donated by retailer and manufacturer clients -- to food banks every year.

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Don't Ignore Reverse Logistics as a Key Profitability Factor

Returns have been regarded as a "necessary evil" in retail and CPG for long enough. Competing in today's rapidly evolving commerce requires seeing reverse logistics as more than just a cost of doing business. Top-performing retailers and manufacturers are realizing this and have begun connecting reverse logistics to the overall business as a performance factor that impacts profitability and marketplace success.

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Unsaleables Success Starts With Sharing Data

You can't understate the significance of unsaleables to retailers and manufacturers. The estimated impact of around $15 billion says it all.

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E-commerce and Transportation Management

As use of the Internet has become more prevalent in our daily lives in past 15 years, parcel shipping has been quietly doing the same. The growing popularity of eCommerce means that more people than ever are purchasing goods online rather than going to brick and mortar stores. According to comScore, inc. (on their website www.comScore.com), there has been a 39% increase in the last five years of consumers purchasing online. This relatively dramatic shift is forcing shippers to adapt their supply chains to the new ways in which we consumers buy goods.

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