New data from a consumer survey conducted by supply chain management company Blue Yonder shows that, for consumers, convenience continues to be king—retailers may dislike returns, but consumers also have their gripes.
According to the results, seven in 10 consumers said tighter return policies prevent them from purchasing items from some brands or retailers, up from six in 10 consumers in 2023. Robinson said that may be due to retailers’ ever-changing returns policies, but also due to the rise in e-commerce over the course of the past several years.
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Tim Robinson, corporate vice president of returns for Blue Yonder, said that increase in sentiment could be partially attributable to where consumers shop.
“The fact that more and more consumers are shopping online, shopping at scale…is partly to blame for the 10 percentage point increase in those that are making decisions based on returns policies,” Robinson said.
That figure may continue to change in the coming years, as retailers change their policies to reflect differences in product categories or based on shopper behavior. Some technologies, like Forter, can identify purchases that have high risk of returns based on their shopping patterns or purchase value. British fast-fashion retailer ASOS recently implemented a policy that would charge frequent returners a higher fee to complete a return than other shoppers.
Robinson said he expects those kinds of policies will likely continue to develop throughout the e-commerce landscape in coming years.
“When you look at the return space, the idea that big retailers should have one single returns policy for every single SKU that they sell…doesn’t make a lot of sense in the modern world,” he said. “There will come a day in the not too distant future, I’m sure, where, when you look at a website, and you go to the product page, you will see a returns policy that is specific to that SKU type.”
Nine in 10 consumers noted that a lenient return policy has an impact on their choices around where to shop; if return policies continue to get tighter, it’s possible that some retailers could be losing out on business as consumers turn to companies that are more return friendly in their eyes.
As consumers continue to shift their preferences, retailers have also deviated from the typical way of doing business; some have started asking consumers to keep unwanted items, rather than returning them.
The survey results show that 72 percent of consumers said a retailer has told them to keep an item they tried to return, rather than sending it back. The data shows 34 percent of consumers say they have had that experience with clothing and accessories, making it the number one category retailers ask consumers to hold onto rather than returning.
That practice comes even as four in 10 consumers note that they would be willing to pay more than $5 to return an item to a retailer, and three in 10 consumers say they would spend more than $10 on returning an item.
Robinson said he finds offloading unwanted items onto a consumer a bit disappointing, especially since the industry has spent recent years trying to find solutions that make financial sense, while also taking societal and environmental considerations into account. He noted that, particularly from a sustainability standpoint, telling a consumer to keep something they don’t want may not be ideal.
“Realistically, you’re pushing that problem back to the consumer. How many occasions are there going to be a second life for that item in the consumer’s own ecosystem?” he said. “[Retailers] are just asking you to solve that long-term sustainability problem.”
Already, some consumers struggle with sustainability. Blue Yonder’s data shows that just over half of consumers said they feel concerned about the environmental impacts associated with returning items. Over one-quarter of consumers said that, even if they knew the items they were returning were heading to the landfill, they would proceed with the returns process as planned.
To help encourage consumers to take a more proactive approach to sustainability, Robinson recommended companies begin showing consumers the varying carbon or water impacts of their choices. For instance, returning an item in a retailer’s own store may have a lower carbon impact than returning the item at a FedEx facility. If consumers have information like that, they may choose differently.
“As the bigger guys—the Amazons and Walmarts and businesses like that—start to really shine a light on their sustainable credentials when it comes to service and product, I think consumers will start to make [more sustainable] decisions. You might see a cohort leaning more toward sustainability than they are price, but convenience, I suspect, will always be up [top],” Robinson told Sourcing Journal.
