Shoppers are judging retailers by their returns process

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The rise of returns is clearly a product of the increase in e-commerce sales, which is outpacing overall growth; U.S. e-commerce sales growth made up 46 per cent of 2017’s total retail sales growth, an increase of 15 percentage points since 2014, according to FTI Consulting. E-commerce return rates are three to four times higher than rates for brick-and-mortar stores, according to Happy Returns. As legacy merchants stoke their digital channels, they’re not immune to increases in returns.
That’s especially true in apparel, where e-commerce is outrunning overall retail sales online and off. The online apparel market has grown by a compound annual growth rate of 14% since 2012, soaring above the 1 per cent growth offline, according to Forrester Research. The share of fashion spending transacted over the web (20 per cent) outpaced online spending in retail overall (13 per cent), according to the report.
Many shoppers (41 per cent) often make large online orders with an intention to return at least some, after they’ve had a chance to try things out, Narvar found once again this year, and once again that’s especially true of apparel. They want pre-paid labels to easily return through the mail, which most employ for returns (74 per cent mail their returns back, and of that percentage, 63 per cent use the U.S. Post Office, United Parcel Service or FedEx), although shoppers really want to return to a store, (13 per cent do now and 40 per cent think returning in stores is easier), Narvar also found.
The logistics companies conducting all this research are selling retailers on their platforms and processes, but they do have a point — as the returns process increasingly becomes a normal aspect of shopping for more people, it’s an opportunity to gain or lose loyalty. More than half (55 per cent) of consumers surveyed say they’ve written off future purchases at a given retailer based solely on an inflexible return policy, but 86 per cent have made another purchase during a product return at least once during the past year, according to Optoro.