Understanding Deceptive Communication Influencing Online Product Returns: A Typological Approach

Abstract

Marketing communications are one of the major strategies of any company to succeed in the competitive atmosphere. These strategies are used to inform, persuade and remind the customers about the existence of the brand in the market (Lane Keller, 2001). Not only offline retailers, but online retailers are also equally concerned regarding their effectiveness of marketing communications. The effectiveness of their marketing communications is reflected in acquisitions of new customers and more revenue generation. However, sometimes to achieve some of the marketing objectives, marketers breach the ethics of marketing communications and indulge in deceptive marketing communication practices (Das, 2016). The deceptive advertisement practices adopted by online retailers lead to some unpleasant reaction among the customers, high product return being a prominent one (Das & Kunja, 2024). Product return behaviour explains the reverse movement of the product from the customer to the retailer (Ambilkar et al., 2022). However, despite high product returns, there has been an increase in deceptive communication practices by online retailers due to fierce competition in the market. Furthermore, deceptive communication has been evolved as a primary reason of online product return behaviour (Pei & Paswan, 2018; Das & Kunja, 2024). There are many ways through which retailers deceive the customers through their marketing communications (Loca & Ceku, 2010). Deceptive communication can happen in the case of almost all products and services. Although deceptive communication has been in practice for a significant period, academic research in exploring this area has been somewhat limited over the years. Therefore, this study delves deeper into the deceptive communication practices to explore different types of communication practices undertaken by online retailers…...