报告题目：Store Accessibility and Product Returns in Omnichannel Retailing: Evidence from Store Openings and Closures

报告所属学科：工商管理

报告人：庄梦舟（香港大学）

报告时间：2026年10月26日 8:30-12:30

报告地点：经管学院A0306室

报告摘要：

Physical-store network changes affect not only where and how much consumers purchase, but also the product returns subsequently generated by those purchases. Yet sales, return volume, and return rates need not move together, and aggregate return measures may conceal different responses across purchase channels. We examine how changes in physical-store accessibility affect sales, subsequent return volume, return propensity, and recorded return reasons for products originally purchased online versus offline. We study a leading omnichannel home-appliance retailer using transaction and return records around seven store openings and three closures in a focal city, supplemented with transaction data from three geographically separate donor cities. We use synthetic difference-in-differences to construct event-specific counterfactuals and estimate the effects of major increases and decreases in local store accessibility. Returns are classified by the original purchase channel, irrespective of where they are processed. In the primary specification, increased accessibility raises sales in both purchase channels, lowers the return rate of online purchases, and raises the return rate of offline purchases. Importantly, the lower online return rate does not translate into a statistically detectable decline in returned units. Reduced accessibility increases both the volume and rate of returns generated by online purchases without a statistically detectable decline in online sales. Return-reason analyses show especially pronounced responses in mismatch-related online returns, whereas offline responses span preference, quality, and fulfillment categories. Retailers should evaluate store-network changes using sales, return volume, return rates, and return-reason composition jointly. A lower return rate does not necessarily imply fewer returned units or lower return-processing requirements when sales expand. Likewise, a sales-only assessment of store closures may overlook deterioration in the subsequent return outcomes of online purchases. The findings highlight the need to coordinate store-network evaluation with channel-specific returns management.

报告人简介：

庄梦舟，博士毕业于美国伊利诺伊大学香槟分校，现为香港大学经管学院助理教授。他的研究专注于在新的媒体、新情景、新的渠道模式和新的社交环境中，企业的广告、定价以及销售策略的设计与优化。他参与了多个与可口可乐，淘宝，苏宁，网易游戏，百度等国内外知名企业的咨询项目。他在研究中主要采用计量模型、现场实验、非参数估计、机器学习等方法分析企业或消费者层面的数据，从而提出对企业，消费者和政策制定者有价值的建议。现已在工商管理领域的一流期刊发表多篇文章，包括Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Information Systems Research, Journal of Academy of Marketing Science等。