A few years ago (but still a few years after Jared Spool's article) I noticed that zappos.com required registration for purchase. I was super-curious about this because at the time, Amazon had recently bought Zappos and at the time, Amazon was not requiring registration.
I asked Zappos about it, and eventually got to someone who could talk to me about why--the answer was that they get so many returns that the overall customer experience is better if they know all your details up front. (I'm not sure why that's true but that's what they said).
They didn't give details (and I'm sure they wouldn't), but when I think about how I use Amazon now, I return a lot of stuff.
I asked Zappos about it, and eventually got to someone who could talk to me about why--the answer was that they get so many returns that the overall customer experience is better if they know all your details up front. (I'm not sure why that's true but that's what they said).
They didn't give details (and I'm sure they wouldn't), but when I think about how I use Amazon now, I return a lot of stuff.