The Janus Face of AI Adoption and Return Policy for E-Tailers in the Presence of Opportunistic Consumer Behavior

In online retailing, e-tailers increasingly offer flexible return policies to reduce consumer-product valuation mismatches and adopt AI-powered virtual shopping technologies to further alleviate purchase uncertainty. However, both strategies may unintentionally encourage opportunistic consumer behavior, such as temporary product trials and excessive returns. This raises a key operational question: how should an e-tailer jointly consider AI technology adoption and return policy decisions under co