Online retailers must minimize wares being returned

livemint.com:

In recent times, shoppers have been displaying new behaviours. A phenomenon called ‘bracketing’ is on the rise. This term describes a tendency of a consumer to buy multiple versions of a product, such as different sizes of a shirt, with the intent of sending back the ones they don’t want to keep.

According to a study by Narvar, more than 58% of shoppers in the US resort to bracketing behaviour. Another practice among a few shoppers is ‘wardrobing.’ That is, wearing an item of apparel once and then returning it. Thanks to the emergence of these new behaviours, shopping returns have reached unprecedented levels.

According to industry reports, 16.5% of the goods sold in the US in 2022, valued at nearly $817 billion, have been returned. In 2019, the return rate was only 8%. That it has more than doubled in a very short span of time is a great concern.

As per data from Indian retailers, returns in the Indian online shopping market stand at around 25-40%. This high and increasing rate of returns is a serious problem for many an online retailer. The immediate impact of high returns is the toll it takes on the profit margins of a retailer.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, it costs a retailer $27 to handle the return of an online order worth $100. Many of the returned goods are not in a condition to be resold. Some of them gets re-routed to charities.

Much of the burden of this return behaviour is borne by the environment. In the US alone, 2.6 million tonnes of returned clothes wound up in landfills in 2020. According to Earth.org, fashion is the third-most-polluting industry in the world after construction and food.