In this special episode of Total Retail Talks, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan and Digital Content Manager Kristina Stidham discuss Total Retail’s latest research report, “How to Make Free Shipping Profitable.” The report is the compilation of a 10-part article series that Total Retail published on the topic earlier this year. The article series, which was published between January 2020 and May 2020, was written by Manish Chowdhary, founder and CEO of Cahoot, a peer-to-peer order fulfillment network where merchants collaborate to increase their sales and margins by offering profitable one- and two-day free shipping to customers nationwide — without spending a penny more than economical ground shipping.

The report is intended to educate retailers on how they can offer free shipping for online purchases, helping them to remain a viable option in a saturated and ultracompetitive e-commerce market. The key for retailers is being able to do this without it becoming a money-losing proposition. This issue has taken on even greater importance given the environment in which retailers are now operating in, one in which consumers are showing an increasing preference for shopping online. The report addresses various steps that retailers can take to offset the cost of offering free shipping on online orders, from merchandising to pricing to marketing, among others. To download the complimentary report, How to Make Free Shipping Profitable, click here.