The 30% return rate for online purchases is more than triple the 8.89% that are brought back to brick-and-mortar stores. Overall, Americans returned $260 billion in merchandise last year, a 66% increase over the total from five years ago. (This overall rise may well be linked to the growth in e-Commerce that has taken place since 2011.)
What’s behind the rash of digital returns? While 20% of consumers received a damaged product and slightly more, 23%, received the wrong item altogether, many returns are less easily explainable: 22% of consumers cited that the product “looks different” than its online representation as the reason they sent it back, according to this infographic from Augment.
Retailers, particularly those selling complex products online, need to do a better job educating their customers. In the consumer electronics vertical, for example, approximately 65% of products are returned with no fault found, because consumers simply didn’t understand the product.
Source: Augment
