Member Article

Super Saturday to cause £80m worth of returns

While sales from Super Saturday topped £1.2billion last year, in spite of consumers getting in the festive spending spirit, trading from this day create a hangover for retailers, warns returns intelligence company, Clear Returns. Despite all the hype around the amount of sales set to be made on Super Saturday, this single day of trading alone could cost retailers up to £53m once the cost of returns are factored in.

Julie Ashworth, Chairman of Clear Returns, commented: “Returns are fundamentally caused by an expectation gap – if what was bought instore or online doesn’t then meet these expectations once a shopper gets the item home, they will return it.”

“This is exacerbated even more with the pressures of last minute gift shopping instore or when consumers are rushing to place orders before the last cut-off date for deliveries of online orders before Christmas,” she continues. “Consumers might make hurried decisions or impulse buys which they then later regret once they get home or the item arrives, increasing the likelihood of returns further. Indeed, we anticipate that £80million worth of stock from sales on Super Saturday will be returned.”

And this presents a double hit for retailers: not only does it mean lost margins on the returned stock itself but even more detrimentally, these sent back items get tied up in the ‘returns loop’ only becoming available for customers to buy in January – another period of discounting.

“Returns from Super Saturday are unlikely to be processed until the New Year. Becoming available during the January sales, the next time the returned item is sold, it could be at half the price, causing retailers even more lost margin. This means stock sold on Super Saturday could lead to as much as £40m of lost revenue,” Ashworth concludes.

For further information on how retailers can help customers keep more of what they buy and minimise the impact of returns, download the full report: clearreturns.com/getthefacts

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Chelsea Reay .