Product returns incur a substantial financial loss for retailers. We demonstrate how, when, and why cross-selling during the product returns process can reduce this loss in revenue. We find consumers more readily spend money refunded from product returns than unspent money. We theorize that this refund effect occurs because consumers psychologically realize the loss of money when purchasing products and earmark that money for spending. Thus, consumers feel a smaller psychological loss when spending refunded money than unspent money on a subsequent purchase. In six experiments, we find consumers spend refunded money more freely than unspent money, even more than windfall gains like lottery winnings, on products in similar and different product categories (e.g., groceries vs. apparel). However, the refund effect only holds when consumers do not expect to return products at the point of purchase and before refunded money is commingled with money in other accounts. Our findings identify a new fungibility violation due to mental accounting (i.e., a new source effect), and illustrate its value for generating, validating, and explaining revenue retention strategies.

中文翻译：

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产品退货的心理账户

产品退货会给零售商带来巨大的财务损失。我们展示了产品退货流程中交叉销售如何、何时以及为何可以减少这种收入损失。我们发现消费者更愿意花掉产品退货退款而不是未花的钱。我们推测这种退款效果之所以会出现这种情况，是因为消费者在购买产品时在心理上意识到金钱的损失，并将这笔钱专门用于消费。因此，消费者在使用退款时感受到的心理损失比在后续购买时未使用的钱要小。在六个实验中，我们发现消费者在类似和不同产品类别（例如杂货与服装）的产品上花费退款的钱比未花的钱更自由，甚至比彩票中奖等意外收获还要多。然而，只有当消费者在购买时不希望退货且退款金额与其他帐户中的金额混合之前，退款效果才有效。我们的研究结果确定了由于心理账户（即新的源效应）而导致的新的可替代性违规，并说明了其对于生成、验证、