The Price of Returns: $850B Merchandise Back in 2025

Returns will account for 16% of global sales. According to the National Retail Federation, the world’s largest association of retailers, the return of goods sold during the year will reach a value of $849.9 billion. In total, the figure represents 15.9% of global retail sales for the entire year, according to the latest report published by the organization in conjunction with UPS.

The text puts numbers to the billions of dollars that returns represent for the retail sector, although it estimates that the figure for 2025 will also be the lowest, as a proportion of total sales, since the outbreak of the pandemic. Specifically, last year returns accounted for 16.9% of the total $890 billion sold, while in 2022 it was 16.5% and in 2021 another 16.6%, with sales of $816.8 billion and $760.8 billion, respectively.

“Retailers indicate that among their top priorities for 2026 are both increasing online sales and reducing returns,“ the text explains. In online sales alone, the returns ratio is higher, at up to 19.3%. Returns are no longer the end of transactions with consumers, and represent a business opportunity for retailers, the text explains, and can become a focal point of the companies’ strategy.

57% of consumers would not buy a product again if the company had charged them for the return

In the long term, the retail sector is working to reduce the costs of these returns, while responding correctly to the demands of increasingly demanding consumers, and where there is a business opportunity for brands. “Consumers are taking into account more than ever before what the experience of a return has been like in order to return, or not, to buy,“ the NFR report argues. Today, 57% of consumers would not buy a product again if the company charged them for the return, up from 40% in last year’s edition.

Conversely, 82% of consumers admit that they consider free returns to be an important driver when shopping, up from 76% a year ago. A bad experience when returning products, meanwhile, leads another 71% of consumers not to buy from certain companies again, up from 67% a year ago.

Despite this increase in customer expectations, more and more brands are charging for the return of goods. According to the study, the main reason for this is due to increased operational costs when carrying out returns, as well as shipping costs. Tariffs and economic uncertainty ranked third, while trying to educate consumers not to return as many products was also a major cause.