Almost half of online purchases of clothing and fashion end up in returns after purchase
One shirt size L and another size M. Click. One dress from the M and another from the L. Clic. Total: four items in the basket. To buy. Online sales have skyrocketed with the outbreak of Covid-19 and along with them, returns have also skyrocketed. Acquiring several garments to get the size right is ‘free’ for the Zara, Primark or Sheinn consumer.
“The category that registers the most returns is clothing, footwear and accessories, since almost half of Internet users who buy online (48%) declare that they have returned any of these products at some time,” reveals the report ‘Online purchases in Spain. Edition 2021’ of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation.
The kings and queens of returns are consumers between 35 and 44 years of age, according to the Cetelem Observatory. The study led by the department of Nadia Calviño refines more: women and with a high level of studies.
Both urgent shipments and free returns are attractive additions to e-commerce, but they weigh more and more on the environmental bottom line.
With more than a decade on the Spanish streets, electronic commerce has matured, but it has not forgotten the levers that made it take off in the beginning.
Free express shipping, free returns and free parcels are additions that weigh more and more on companies’ income statements and also leave their mark on their sustainable roadmap.
“The fingers have been pinched, since they are carried out without any kind of criteria, they entail a high cost for both e-commerce companies and the environment,” explains Cristian Castillo, professor at the UOC’s Economics and Business Studies, an expert in logistics. .
The culture of “not everything is urgent” has already reached some delivery companies such as Correos. The emissions generated by delivery vans have focused the debate on mobility in large cities. Now, it is the turn of returns.
“Managing customer returns is a real headache for many e-commerce platforms,” says Castillo. Companies not only think about fast delivery so as not to inconvenience their customers, but also have in mind how to ‘recover’ the products that are returned.
This is how the so-called reverse logistics is formed, which facilitates the creation of selective collection channels for products or services. “It can account for up to 4% of the turnover of an online store like Zara or Amazon.”
The return in the store, establish a collection point or take it to a parcel center. These are some of the options that online stores offer their customers, but they all have a common denominator: zero euros.
“Current return policies must change, that free and unlimited returns should have their days numbered,” warns Castillo. A ‘right’ that has an expiration date.
“Managing customer returns is a real headache for many e-commerce platforms”
professor of Economics and Business Studies at the UOC
For several months, Amazon has incorporated the technology to monitor the friends of the return. “This is a way to limit the problem, and to educate customers and clean up their client portfolio,” explains Castillo.
According to a study by Optoro, in the United States alone, the transport of returns generates more than 15 million tons of CO2 emissions per year, the same as three million cars in a year.
An ecological expense that is added to the monetary one, since “transport costs are usually double those of delivery, in addition to logistics management,” he adds. A compensation that Zara has sought in nearly thirty countries.
In the Old Continent, for example, it is already in force in Germany, the United Kingdom and Ireland, among others. In these countries, the fee is around 2 euros per return. A measure based on its sustainability report.
Amazon, for its part, monitors the accounts with the highest number of returns to which it restricts access to its online shopping platform. An idea that, in 2019, Asos raised among its clients, but that it has not yet launched.
“If it is only one company that follows this policy, it is very likely that consumers will penalize it by not buying its products,” reveals Castillo. He warns that it is reflected in surveys and customer satisfaction statistics, where they say that eight in ten (84%) online shoppers would turn their backs on a retailer after a bad experience during a return.
The transport of returns generates more than 15 million tons of CO2 emissions per year, the same as three million cars in a year
With almost half of clothing and fashion returns, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the question remains, what happens to those returned dresses and shirts? «If the product that is returned is of low value, it entails a double benefit for the company: on the one hand, savings in transport costs and management of the return, which do not compensate for the fact of recovering the product, and, on the other hand, another, the undoubted satisfaction of the client, who is treated as a gift and is also freed from having to manage the return”, answers Neus Soler, collaborating professor at the UOC’s Economics and Business Studies.
In other cases, the products are stored in the industrial warehouses owned by the firms. «The large e-commerce platforms have rethought that management; thus, once the product is returned, those that cannot be put up for sale again, instead of being destroyed, are sold through a secondary channel in which the buyer accepts that the product is a return and may not be in perfect condition », says Castillo.
Finally, if they do not find an outlet in the secondary channels, the final destination of the clothing returns is usually the landfill. “These new return policies must be accompanied by an administrative regulation,” he says.
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