As you are trying to reduce the costs and maintain a balance between your income and how much you spend, you may find refund policies extremely useful. Why? Because if you buy something and see that it doesn’t work, fit or meet your expectations, you can simply go back to the store and return that item. From this perspective, a purchase has very low risks or even none. It is like the perfect scenario: if it doesn’t work for you, you can get your money back. It is as simple as that.
This way of thinking is very common among Australians. In fact, statistics reveal that more than 90% of clients consider return policies when deciding whether to buy a product or not. But is it true that these policies have only advantages for you, as a customer? At first glance, so it seems. But don’t you think that this will be a major disadvantage for sellers?
Refund Policies – Advantages for Businesses
As it was already mentioned, most of the people regard return policies as a deciding factor when it comes to purchasing an item. This means that an overwhelming number of customers are attracted by the fact that they can return a product.
In fact, return policies are a strategy to convince customers to buy more than they need, which is an advantage for sellers. But why would someone feel more tempted to purchase an item he or she can return, compared to one that cannot be brought back to the store?
How Customers Perceive Refund Policies
Even from ancient times, when a seller allowed the buyers to bring back the goods if they were not satisfied with them, this was like a guarantee of the products’ quality. When someone is telling you that you can return an item, your subconscious experiences a feeling of security, which will give you an impulse to buy that product. Without this sentiment, you will most probably become suspicious and hesitate to make the purchase.
Business owners are aware of this aspect, and they take full advantage of it. This is the main reason why they have introduced refund policies. They want you to spend your money on their products, not actually to return an item that doesn’t work for you.
A customer is usually so excited about the idea that he/she may go back to the store and get his or her money back that he/she ignores the costs of this action. Returning a product will cost you time and money, but your subconscious does not notice these aspects at first, when finding out about refund policies.
So in fact, these return policies actually encourage people to splurge more rather than actually going through with returning these items. How many items did you buy and then how many did you return later on? Those numbers will never match, trust me.