Returns are a problem for digital retailers. The fashion industry has one of the highest return rates in online retail. This is due to the fact that fast fashion companies offer generous return policies so customers can take no risk and try out sizes and fits at home. But the high returns have their price, not only for the company but also for the environment.
A high volume of returns prevents retailers from reducing their environmental footprint, just as rising transport costs due to global inflation eat into profit margins. More than half of consumers accept that returning fashion bought online is bad for the environment.
With returns management software and predictive shopping metrics helping to reduce volume, new data can reduce returns in fashion e-commerce. Among other things, visual user-generated content (UGC) such as selfies should help.
‘Real models’ could prevent returns
61 percent of those who took part in a survey by the commerce experience platform Nosto, which examined how fashion retailers should approach the returns issue, believe that the high return rates can be reduced by online shops showing more photos and videos of other customers show after purchase. This is to help prospective buyers see how the clothes look on ‘real’ people, not just models. 59 percent of respondents think that a virtual try-on, which allows them to see themselves in the outfits they found online, could also help reduce returns.
The results come from a survey of just over 2,000 respondents in the US and UK commissioned by the commerce experience platform Nosto, used by fashion brands including Patagonia, Paul Smith, Pangaia and Todd Snyder.
The release of the new study coincides with rising returns rates, which are reportedly hurting the profitability of online fashion brands like Asos and Boohoo. In the United States, the average e-commerce return rate rose to 20.8 percent in 2021, with an estimated $671 billion worth of returned goods.
Fashion brands are also increasingly aware that poor sustainability and environmental performance can damage their credibility. Recently, several brands, including H&M, stopped using a tool that tried to measure the sustainability of garments due to concerns about greenwashing. At the same time, respondents to the Nosto survey were more than twice as likely to agree that returns are bad for the environment as they were to say that returns waste fuel, packaging and other resources.
“Up until now, polished studio photos have been the standard way of presenting clothes in online shops. However, by supplementing this with customers’ own images, customers get a more accurate picture of how the products are worn in everyday life by ‘normal people’ who actually own the items,” says Damien Mahoney, Chief Strategy Officer of Nosto. “That’s why fashion retailers use their customers’ self-generated data on their websites, such as post-purchase selfies that they upload to Instagram. Some also encourage their customers to comment on the fit of products or share their measurements in captions so that other prospective buyers can make comparisons that will provide them with a better basis for purchasing decisions and thus help reduce returns.”
In the end, selfies could be more than just vanity. User-generated content, which is created anyway – and takes up resource-intensive server space – could at least make a small contribution to making online trade a little more sustainable.
This article was previously published on FashionUnited.uk. Translation and editing: Barbara Russ.