Retail Returns Reach 10% of Sales

A new report reveals that the U.S. retail industry was hit with nearly $369 billion in returns, a number that does not include the cost of overhead.

Appriss Retail (Louisville, Ky.), an artificial intelligence-fueled retail performance improvement solutions provider, teamed up with National Retail Federation (Washington, D.C.) to help analyze and contribute to its Consumer Returns in the Retail Industry report.

As a part of that, the result found that the almost $369 billion worth of returns amounted to about 10 percent of all sales. Also, about 11 percent of all online orders are returned to brick-and-mortar stores.

Additionally, the report found that about 5 percent (or $18.4 billion) of annual returns are fraudulent and about 9 percent (or $6.5 billion) of all holiday sales are fraudulent.