Even as retailers and brands tighten up their policies, returns remain a big headache.
Blue Yonder’s latest research revealed that 63 percent of retailers polled “face significant challenges with the management of returns as customers increasingly turn to online shopping options,” authors of the report said.
And despite 89 of respondents saying they had changed their policies in the past 12 months to make them more pricey for consumers or tightening returns restrictions, more than half (59 percent) experienced an increase in the rate of returns over that same period. The takeaway? These changes have not deterred customers from making returns.
The report also identified key categories that are seeing higher return rates — both online and in-store. Blue Yonder also said retail product categories “that traditionally haven’t experienced high return rates for in-store purchases are now seeing increased return rates online.” High return rate categories include sports and outdoor equipment (76 percent), cosmetics (73 percent), trade tools/equipment and DIY (72 percent) and children’s toys (68 percent).
“These findings indicate that while retailers have tightened their policies, consumer returns are still increasing,” said Shannon Wu-Lebron, corporate vice president of retail industry strategy at Blue Yonder. “This proves that putting the onus on consumers is not necessarily the solution to control returns. Instead, retailers should be looking at technology to help them find better ways to manage the returns and reverse logistics process to reduce costs, improve inventory resell rates and protect customer loyalty.”
WorkJam’s New Solutions
At the NRF Big Show last week, WorkJam announced the rollout of three new products that are embedded into the company’s platform, “making the WorkJam super app more robust and cementing the company’s leadership in frontline workplace technology,” the company said in a statement.
The products include Site Coach, a digital dashboard for frontline employees. The second is Analytics Insights Reports, which the company said builds on its core reporting capabilities. And the third is Extensive Audit Capabilities, which is designed to “supercharge task management,” WorkJam said.
Steven Kramer, chief executive officer of WorkJam, said with these new product launches, “we’re enhancing our offering for our enterprise customers and embedding all the solutions they need into our single super app. These new products will help businesses prepare for the increasingly complex compliance landscape they’ll face this year and tap real-time analytics insights that help them operate more effectively and empower their teams.”
Making Check Outs Smoother
Looks like it’s time to make the check-out process frictionless and easier. As retailers such as Wegmans, Walmart and Costco are rethinking self-checkout, new research commissioned by Avery Dennison showed “an inflection point in consumers’ shopping behavior,” with 37 percent of respondents polled in the U.S. and the U.K. saying “they would switch to a retailer that offers full check-out free stores.”
The research also showed that 67 percent of respondents said “they would opt for retailers that offer self-scanning at the end of a shop, while almost three in five (59 percent)” noted the same about self-scanning while they shop.
The pushback on current self-checkout operations is due to scanning glitches and consumer frustrations. But Avery Dennison’s research revealed a possible solution: It found that 45 percent of those polled said they “would switch to a self-checkout service where products are automatically detected via in-item tagging, meaning they don’t need to scan a barcode.”
Francisco Melo, president of the solutions group at Avery Dennison, said, “Considering that most people haven’t yet had the opportunity to try a full check-out free store, our research shows a high percentage would be more likely to switch retailers for the experience, which demonstrates a clear shift in consumer expectations. At the same time, a growing number of leading retailers are turning to digital ID solutions to truly transform the customer experience.”
