TV home shopping is a representative non-face-to-face transaction method in which consumers purchase products without being able to check them directly. Along with online sales, it has an environmental distribution structure with a high possibility of...
TV home shopping is a representative non-face-to-face transaction method in which consumers purchase products without being able to check them directly. Along with online sales, it has an environmental distribution structure with a high possibility of failure after purchase, in which the product information notified by the seller and the consumer feel different perception of the product after purchasing the actual product. In this environment, return and exchange services act as devices that buffer the uncertainty and psychological burden that consumers may feel in the process of purchasing before and after purchase, and many previous studies have shown that the return policy is a major factor that greatly affects consumers' purchase behavior, purchase satisfaction, channel, and brand loyalty. Beyond the concept of a simple post-sale service, the return policy acts as a key factor in promoting purchase decisions for consumers and is recognized as one of the factors that make up service quality Among the products sold on TV home shopping, fashion products, in particular, have strong characteristics of post-experiential products. Fashion products are very important in terms of the overall style that consumers expect before wearing, as well as the elements of extremely subjective evaluation such as wearability, silhouette, and texture given by the material, and for this reason, it is known that consumers' risk perception is the most influential product in the online and home shopping environment. However, despite this risk perception being a product, fashion products are the best sales items that account for the largest sales volume in TV home shopping, and they are the items with the highest repurchase rate as well as the influx of new customers by season and brand. Therefore, "free return" in TV home shopping plays an important role in reducing purchase risk by functioning as a safety device for consumers. These results imply that policies such as free returns are likely to act as strategic factors to reduce purchasing resistance for consumers. The purpose of this study is to investigate how consumers' perceptions of the free return policy of TV home shopping affect purchase intention through risk perception. In previous studies, the free return policy has been suggested as a major factor influencing repurchase intention, such as service satisfaction and purchase reliability formation. However, previous studies have limitations in that the free return policy did not provide consistent results in the structural relationship between the process of necessarily reducing risk perception and purchase intention. Therefore, this study aims to more carefully examine and clearly verify the relationship between risk perception and purchase intention in the free return policy. For the purpose of this study, a total of 400 responses were collected by conducting an online panel survey from November 18 to 19, 2025 for consumers who have purchased fashion products (including clothes, shoes, and accessories) through TV home shopping. The collected questionnaire data were analyzed using SPSS 28.0 and Hayes' PROCESS Macro (Model 4). Analysis descriptive statistics analysis, exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were conducted. The results of a study on the free return policy in TV home shopping were found to have a direct positive (+) effect on the purchase intention of fashion products. This shows that the free return policy is acting as a factor that has a practical impact on the process of deciding to purchase a product beyond the function of supplementing the risk perception and consumer complaints after purchasing a product. In particular, it was confirmed that the free return policy at TV home shopping plays a role in lowering the risk of consumers' purchase intentions in product groups where consumer subjective satisfaction varies from individual to individual, such as fashion products. On the other hand, there was no significant mediating effect on the risk perception felt by consumers in the relationship between the free return policy and purchase intention. These results show that as researchers accumulate experience in purchasing home shopping for TV, consumers are already taking some of the basic risk levels, It suggests that the free return policy provided by the channel is recognized as a direct convenience factor and not as a compensation device or a risk reduction factor. In other words, customers show that the convenience of service procedures or policy clarity is likely to directly affect the formation of purchase intentions, and in fashion purchasing situations, risk perception factors do not play a decisive role in consumers' purchase intentions. This study confirmed that previous studies are different from the trend that has been explained by studying the consumer decision-making process focusing on the risk perception of online shopping. This is
interpreted as a result of reflecting the unique sales characteristics of the TV home shopping channel, and suggests that in a sales environment such as home shopping, policies that provide services that allow consumers to feel more convenient about purchasing rather than reducing risk perception may have a greater impact. It is also meaningful in that it empirically suggests that the free return policy can play a key role in service marketing in the purchase process of TV home shopping fashion products. The key findings of the study are that the free return policies in purchasing TV home shopping fashion products acts as an important factor in improving consumers' purchase intentions, and revealed that the influence of risk perception may be relatively limited. These results provide an empirical basis for understanding consumer decision-making in various non-face-to-face distribution channels as well as TV home shopping channels. The results of this study can be used as basic data in establishing service marketing strategies in the future TV home shopping and digital distribution environment.