If free shipping and next-day delivery are the marquee stars of modern retail, an old nemesis lurks in the background: product returns. Long a headache for customers and retailers alike, returns are getting renewed attention amid a surge in online shopping and heightened demand for sustainable retail practices.
To streamline the process and reduce costs as well as environmental impact, retailers are increasingly exploring new approaches to returns. That includes turning to outside tech help, offering more options for returns, and trying to prevent returns in the first place through new services like virtual fitting rooms.
Inspiring much of the rethinking around returns has been the online shopping boom sparked by the Coronavirus pandemic in the last two years. E-commerce sales reached about $1tn in 2021, up 38% from 2019, and amounting to 16% of US retail overall, according to the US Commerce Department.