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Harriet Gordon
Harriet Gordon says the clothes do not look like what the internet stores are showing.
Returning an item that you have just purchased is easier than ever thanks to the Internet. In fact, traders have the obligation to guarantee this right, but what about customers who change almost everything they buy?
L & # 39; call "wardrobe buyer" Buy and make things compulsively. This is a customer profile that has grown in recent years and poses a series of problems to some troubled companies.
Harriet Gordon meets this profile.
Aged 28, she works in London (UK) as a human resources consultant and recognizes that she retains only half of her online purchases.
He usually spends around US $ 500 per monthbut he returns items in which he was spent about 250 USD.
Most of the time, it's because the clothes do not go as expected or because the color or the fabric has nothing to do with photography that convinced him to buy the product on the Internet.
"You see models wearing fantastic things," he says, They are not alike when they are tested.
The fact that most of the stores in which you buy offers home delivery facilitates the process.
Test and throw
Although she works in a central and commercial district of London, Harriet Gordon says it is much easier to buy online and avoid the queues and stress of physical stores.
That sounds like what happens to Hester Grainger, a 41-year-old woman who bought seven dresses for a wedding on the site Asos, one of the world's most popular online fashion stores.
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Hester Grainger
Hester Grainger says that he makes almost everything he buys.
I knew I would end up staying with one, but I wanted to make sure it was the right one.
This was not a special case. When you need new Texans, ask for five pairs and choose one.
In total, he calculates that he spends between 480 and 510 USD per month for the purchase of clothes, but he returns a sum such that he does not spend more than 90 or 100 USD.
"I spend hundreds of dollars on various items in different stores for a month, but I'm probably going back around 80%," he told the BBC.
Hester, founder of the Mumala Club, a platform online for mothers, says that your buying habit it has to do with its small size.
It is 1.5 meters high and it's hard to know if anything will go, so it often requires three sizes of the same item.
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Oli Scarff / Getty Images
Some studies show that our heart speeds up when we buy.
heartbeats
Buyers like Harriet and Hester are not unusual.
A recent study by credit card multinational Barclaycard, which badyzes nearly half of credit and debit transactions in the UK, indicates that a quarter of retailers have seen the number of returns increase over the past two decades. last two years.
In the case of clothing and footwear stores, consumers report almost half of what they buy, according to the report.
Social networkshelp to stimulate the trend: about 10% of buyers acknowledge having taken selfie for Instagram or Facebook posing with a new article and then returning the purchase.
Geoff Beattie, a professor of psychology at Edge Hill University in England, says he is surprised that the number of returns is not even higher.
His own research shows that our pulsations are accelerated when we buy This emotion lasts until we report the article at home and show it, but it disappears quickly and we regret having spent the money or the fact that we we had not worn this garment. So we give it back, he explains.
"What happens next is the least exciting part of the whole process," he told the BBC.
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Newsquest
Hester says that being small makes buying clothes online more difficult.
The increase in online shopping favors this habit because "There is no guilt or shame" or the need to give too many explanations, says the specialist.
In addition, major discounts, such as Black Friday or Cyber Monday, encourage the so-called "shopping for panic", which tend to be more related to the later remorse of the buyer.
A problem for stores
The returns involve not only shipping costs, but also packing and cleaning. In addition, they are a waste of time.
If an article is not available, it may be because it's returned. And to avoid that some stores have to ask for more than what they expect to sell.
Another problem is the fast fashion cycle. By the time an item has been returned, it may be on sale, which means that the store can no longer sell it at its original price.
This makes some traders raise prices. According to Barclaycard, in the UK, a third of them do it.
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Getty Images
Amazon has some problems with "wardrobe buyers".
The fact that the stores strive at all costs to guarantee sales during sales facilitates the return of items to customers without paying additional service fees. Sometimes they even offer the option "try before you pay".
It is inevitable that many take advantage of the system.
But some companies are fighting against this. The giant of the internet Amazon, For example, he began to blocking customers who return too much.
"We want everyone to use Amazon, but sometimes users misuse our service for a long time," a company spokesman told The Wall Street Journal.
Other companies follow his example.
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Understanding customers
However, Vicky Brock, director of data and innovation at eBound Returns, a software used to manage returns, says that it's wrong to badume that those who come back frequently are bad customers.
Brock argues that a small proportion of buyers generate the most returns, but that this group includes both the best and the worst customers.
"Vetoing buyers by returning items repeatedly overlooks the value of each customer and reveals that the merchant he does not understand the behavior of his clients", he says to the BBC.
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Ashley Coombes
Vicky Brock says that those who often return their products are not bad customers.
Some data shows that the more buyers place orders over time, the less orders they generate.
Providing better images of clothes on the Internet and more accurate sizes is one of the ways that stores are using to reduce the number of returns, experts say.
Some companies such as Uniqlo and Asos already have suggestions based on previous purchases and to the customer's weight and size information.
Another option is to direct personalized marketing. For example, if a customer tends to stay in his pants but always return his shoes, the ads will come only from the first.
Vicky Brock says stores should act urgently as the trend increases.
Buyers like Hester do not have the intention to change their behavior. "I do not feel sorry for the merchants, they are part of the problem as they offer free or very cheap returns. They should better adjust the sizes"he explains.
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