How Consumers Return During and After Covid-19

UTRECHT, Netherlands, July 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — 50% of people in the USA would bring a return parcel to a drop-off point, while only 35% of people in Australia would choose to do the same.

Cycleon, experts in global returns management, have released the results of their global market study into consumer returns behavior. Such insights are valuable to inform brands and retailers on how best to approach returns to keep customers happy and outperform competition.

During the pandemic, e-commerce boomed, with more people shopping online than ever before. Naturally, this increase also led to a growth in return volumes. After years of being overlooked, retail brands are now seeing the importance of optimizing their returns, to heighten both customers experience and operational efficiency.

Just as every customer is different, so are their returns preferences. Cycleon’s study confirmed this by looking at the most and least popular methods for returning items, per country and age group. Consumers responded that during this time their preferred return methods overall were drop-off (39%), pick-up (31%), parcel locker (15%), and return to store (14%).

Survey participants were also asked their preferences regarding returns and sustainability, where 75% indicated they would make concessions to ensure that returns were handled in a more environmentally conscious way.

In short, although trends emerged between the most and least popular ways to return among consumers, answers…