A Salesforce report predicts that consumers in the United States will return more than $1.4 billion in holiday orders this season, a 57% increase from the previous year. This prediction is based on the fact that returns nearly doubled during the week after Cyber Week and have remained high since then. Consumers have spent $97 billion online in the three weeks after Cyber Week, an 8% increase from the previous year, and overall U.S. online sales have risen 5% from 2021 to $245 billion.
Nearly a quarter (23%) of online orders during the last full holiday shopping weekend were buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) purchases. The report suggests that the increase in returns may be due to consumers who purchased gifts earlier in the year and returned them to repurchase at a deeper discount. Retailers have had to prepare for an increase in returns and have implemented policies such as charging customers to return items at third-party locations in order to streamline the process and reduce the amount of returned merchandise that ends up in landfills.
