Key Takeaways:
- Seven in 10 online shoppers have abandoned a cart over shipping costs, and 67% say return fees make them less likely to buy, according to new ICSC research.
- Marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart are now the top discovery channel for new brands, with 44% of consumers making their first purchase there, per new Radial data.
- Both surveys point to the same conclusion: retailers who are inconsistent or unclear on fulfillment costs risk losing shoppers permanently, not just on a single order.
Two new consumer surveys released Tuesday put numbers behind a shift in how shoppers weigh cost, speed and consistency: shipping fees, return policies and delivery reliability are no longer back-end logistics questions. They are now front-line factors in whether a shopper completes a purchase, and whether that loyalty holds up as brands add more channels to shop on.
Shoppers Are Recalculating the Value of Convenience
ICSC’s “Cost of Convenience” survey released Tuesday found that shoppers are increasingly willing to trade speed for savings. Nine in 10 respondents said they would accept slower shipping in exchange for a lower cost, and 61% said cost matters more than convenience when shopping online. At the same time, 70% still expect retailers to offer shipping that is both free and fast.
Cart abandonment tied to shipping costs remains widespread, with 70% of online shoppers reporting they have walked away from a purchase over delivery fees. Return costs carry similar weight: 67% said return fees make them less likely to buy online, and 65% said they have stopped, or would consider stopping, shopping with a retailer because of delivery fees, slow shipping or inconvenient returns.
Generational and income differences were notable. Millennials (78%) and Gen Z (74%) were far more willing to pay extra for faster shipping than Baby Boomers (32%), and half of Gen Z respondents said they have already stopped shopping with a retailer over delivery-related friction, compared with 25% of Baby Boomers. Shoppers in the $125,000 to $249,999 household income range were more likely than the overall average to walk away from a retailer over delivery or return issues, at 76% versus 65%.
Transparency emerged as a lever retailers can pull. 56% of consumers said retailers are not upfront about return fees before purchase, but 71% said they would be more accepting of those fees if they were disclosed ahead of time.
Physical stores are benefiting from the friction consumers associate with online fulfillment. Fifty seven percent of respondents said they value stores for avoiding shipping fees and delivery wait times, 63% cited immediate product access and 61% pointed to the ability to see or try items before buying.
“The cost of convenience has become a key part of the shopping decision,” said Tom McGee, President & CEO of ICSC, in a statement. He added that shoppers are willing to make tradeoffs when the value is clear, while placing a premium on transparency and flexibility, and noted that physical stores remain part of that equation because they solve practical challenges consumers encounter online.
As Brands Scale Across Channels, Consistency Becomes the Test
A separate survey from 3PL provider Radial released Tuesday found that consumers reward brands for expanding into new sales channels, but only if the experience holds steady across all of them. The research found that marketplaces have become the dominant entry point for new-brand discovery. Nearly half of consumers, 44%, said they first buy from a new brand on a marketplace such as Amazon or Walmart, compared with 10% on a retailer’s own website and 3% through social commerce platforms like TikTok Shop.
Marketplace momentum is accelerating, with 38% of consumers saying they shop marketplaces more often than a year ago, led by Millennials (45%) and Gen Z (44%). Trust also tends to rise with channel expansion: 39% of consumers, and 56% of Gen Z specifically, said they trust a brand more once it is available across multiple shopping destinations, while only 5% said the opposite.
But execution gaps are showing up as brands scale. TikTok Shop saw the highest rate of slower or less reliable delivery at 16%, more than double the 7% rate reported for both Amazon and Walmart Marketplace. Amazon had the highest rate of inconsistent pricing for the same product at 17%, and Walmart Marketplace had the highest rate of reported stockouts at 16%.
The consequences of fulfillment failures are steep. More than half of consumers, 53%, said they would stop purchasing from a brand after paying for expedited shipping that failed to arrive faster, 37% said they would walk away after a single canceled order and 27% said the same after receiving the wrong item. Poor customer service was the top driver of public complaints tied to fulfillment problems, cited by 31% of respondents as something that would prompt them to post about a brand on social media or leave a negative review, well ahead of failed expedited shipping (14%), wrong items (12%) or late delivery (7%).
“Marketplaces have become the predominant channel for first-time buyers, but customers don’t lower their expectations once they get there,” said Shauna Bowen, Chief Digital & Transformation Officer at Radial, in a statement. She added that as brands scale, operational excellence becomes a critical driver of customer trust and long-term loyalty, and that retailers often have only one or two chances to get it right.
