If you're an independent retailer selling stuff on e-commerce sites such as Amazon, you may have experienced some strange consumer behaviour. An independent retailer selling on Amazon recently told me a consumer bought a DVD from them. The item was shipped and arrived in the expected time frame. A few days later the consumer contacted the seller saying he was returning the DVD because it was "No longer needed" and was therefore asking for a refund. Now, that doesn't sound like a good excuse to get one's money back, but it is clearly a case of trading rules being misused by a customer: if the item had been faulty or had arrived broken due to the packaging or was in another language or format than the one originally ordered and hadn't been unpacked yet, a return and a refund would have been perfectly understandable, but, when you buy a film on Amazon, you open the box and watch it, well, you should remember you haven't hired it for a few days, you have actually bought it.
The culture of returns, though, is rife at the moment for what regards all sorts of items, especially clothes and accessories. Fashion-wise the "try before you buy" option offered by some e-commerce sites has opened up the opportunity for many retailers to let consumers test a garment or an accessory in the comfort of their house rather than in a badly lit changing room. The items can then be returned without paying for them if they don't fit or if the consumer is not genuinely convinced about them.
While the experiment has its benefits as a consumer may want to think more about an item and purchase only the ones they really like, those retailers who support this scheme (or are planning to support it in 2019 and extend it to a variety of other goods including technology and homeware) should consider the perils of the "intentional returns".
According to surveys there is indeed a high percentage of consumers aged between 18 and 24 in the UK that go for the "try before you buy" option with the intention of returning some items or they are accustomed to order more things than they actually want to purchase.
The practice is probably also encouraged by certain habits developed after spending too much time on social media and maybe looking too much at pics with the hashtag "Outfit of the Day" (#OOTD).
Mainly launched by early fashion blogs around 10-12 years ago, the definition "Outfit Of The Day" was usually accompanied by a picture of the above-mentioned blogger presenting their styling suggestions with what they had in their wardrobes or what they could actually buy.
As the years passed, some high profile bloggers turned influencers and were co-opted by the fashion system and plied with presents. The stakes became higher, with outfits of the day posted on blogs and on Instagram starting to include luxury garments and accessories and portraying a lifestyle that most people can obviously not be able to afford.
Proper collaborations with brands meant that even more images of outfits were produced accompanied by the hashtag #OOTD. Maybe tired of watching, maybe hoping to become influencers themselves and, hopefully, of being pampered with free trips and clothes, ordinary followers started posting images of various outfits of the day.
The problem is that most of us do have limited wardrobes and even when you remix their contents endlessly, it is simply impossible to compete with high profile influencers. This has generated consumption-oriented postings, while staring continuously at pics of people holidaying, eating at fancy restaurants or posing in luxury goods and clothes, had a psychological impact on social media users, putting on them pressure to emulate their Instagram heroes and triggering feelings of inferiority, low self-esteem and anxiety.
The solution therefore for many influencer wannabes, came in the form of the "try before you buy" option with many people returning the items after snapping a picture of themselves in those particular outfits, a practice that devalues clothes and shows that we even buy things that we don't like as long as we can take a pic of ourselves in something new.
The emerging trend has been highligted by a research carried out by Barclaycard (they already carried out another survey focused on the same topic in 2016). Results were unveiled last week and showed that almost one in ten shoppers in the UK bought clothes to post photos on social media and then returned the items. Andy Warhol's proverbial "15 minutes of fame" seem like an eternity compared to the super instant and super quick kick that a hashtag moment can give you.
Apparently there are more 35-44 year-olds into this practice and men spend more money on fashion than women, they are also more embarrassed to be seen in the same outfit twice, so they are also more inclined to wear clothes without removing the price tags to have the option to try and return them.
According to the survey, more than three in ten Brits stated they are more likely to return items they purchase online using "try before you buy" because they don't have to pay for the item beforehand.
In a press release George Allardice, Head of Strategy, Barclaycard Payment Solutions said: "It's interesting to see the social media trend further fuelling the returns culture. We know from our research that returns are having a big impact on retailers, with a huge figure of seven billion pounds a year in sales that they potentially can't recognise."
In the same press release there are suggestions to fight our collective virtual vanity, by buying more versatile pieces that can be cleverly remixed, by becoming more aware of what kind of garments suit us or by taking pictures of ourselves from different angles to see if an outfit really works. Yet, if you're an impenitent fashionista, you could also check second-hand shops and vintage retailers, or find your own personal style and create a uniform by recycling what's hiding in a friend or a relative's wardrobe (never underestimate the potential of granny/auntie's style...).
The final suggestion is more drastic, though: take a break from social media, detox yourself from the #OOTD hashtag, stop following certain influencers and remember that some of them are promoting a lifestyle that simply doesn't exist. In a nutshell, you're more real than them, so establish your own style.
For what regards fashion retailers, Allardice suggests instead further systems to help consumers checking if they genuinely want an item: "Retailers are adopting new processes to make returns easier as they know how important this is to customers. But to ensure shoppers are getting more wear out of their clothes - for posting on social media or for those real-life moments - retailers could think about introducing more varied photography and video content to their websites. By showing how to style items for different looks and how they will appear when worn, they could reduce the number of shoppers 'snapping and sending back'."
Yet retaliers (especially small ones) should maybe also try and start thinking about ways to protect themselves from the culture of returns: it is not a secret that small e-commerce businesses trying to adapt to the flexible return policies offered by e-commerce giants such as Amazon suffer huge financial damages at times such as January, when consumers tend to return unwanted (but used) Christmas gifts. Coping with fast-changing consumer attitudes is hard for such retailers, so more regulations about tracking returns should be introduced to check upon those consumers who may have become experts in the culture of returns.
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