‘Returnuary’ Highlights the Brilliant and Bizarre of Holiday Retail Regret

The holiday season is the golden quarter for eCommerce, where businesses pull out all the stops to maximize sales. Yet, as the festive glow dims in January, a challenge of equal magnitude looms above the retail landscape: the holiday returns season.

Let’s face it: no one’s immune to the regret that follows an overspent holiday season. Whether it’s that sweater you’ll never wear or the kitchen gadget that seemed genius at 2 a.m., January’s retail landscape is defined by the volume and variety of shoppers’ returns. It has gotten to the point that experts have dubbed the period “Returnuary.”

Just what is getting returned post-holiday festivities? As eCommerce penetrates more sectors, from grocery and beyond, some of the merchandise being sent back is nothing to sniff at — literally.

From the fat drippings of a cooked roast beef to a used fake mustache, shoppers are wising up to the fact that the reality of returns as a function of commerce is more of a feature of the landscape than it is a bug.

After all, the holiday season, with its frenzied shopping and gift-giving, is a breeding ground for peculiar returns. For store employees, these returns are less about the refund policy and more about suppressing laughter (or exasperation).

And the rise of social media culture has even introduced an entirely new category of returns: outfits worn once for the perfect Instagram shot and promptly sent back. A report from the Telegraph claimed earlier that Britain was “being buried” under an “avalanche” of returned clothes thanks to Gen Z influencers.

At the same time, there’s growing sophistication in the way returns are handled. Innovations like reverse logistics, where companies track and manage returns in a way that minimizes losses, are becoming commonplace. This is especially important as eCommerce giants like Amazon, as well as smaller, direct-to-consumer brands, offer free returns as a selling point.

Read more: Retailers Resolve to Even Up Online and In-Store Experiences in 2025

Overcoming the Scale of the Returns Challenge

While many returns are legitimate, the bizarre outliers provide a glimpse into human eccentricity. They’re a reminder that for every return backed by genuine dissatisfaction, there’s a customer out there returning a half-eaten turkey, a social media star to-be cycling through fast fashion wardrobes or a swap artist trading yesterday’s used candles for today’s new ones.

At the heart of what can at times be bizarre shopper behaviors is a mix of entitlement, creativity and sometimes sheer audacity when it comes to returns.

Customers often justify their actions with a belief that retailers, particularly large ones, have “built-in” profit margins to absorb such returns. For smaller businesses, however, these antics can be devastating, cutting into already slim margins and consuming valuable time. There’s a fine line between flexibility and profitability.

Shopper returns made up $743 billion, or 14.5%, of the $5.13 trillion of retail sales reported last year, compared to 8.8% in 2012. That represents a jump of 60%. This year alone retailers expect the holiday shopping’s return rate is projected to be 17% higher than usual.

For savvy eCommerce players, returns can ultimately represent an opportunity to reinforce customer loyalty, optimize operations, and innovate for the future. Perhaps the most significant challenge, however, is customer experience.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “2024 Global Digital Shopping Index: SMB Edition,” commissioned by Visa Acceptance Solutions, found that merchants who expect an increase in revenue are 31% likelier to offer online returns than those that anticipate no revenue change.

Overcomplicating the returns process can lead to customer frustration and damage brand reputation, while getting it right with a positive returns experience can help increase the likelihood of consumers shopping with a retailer again. But executing a seamless returns process is no small feat, especially during a post-holiday period characterized by record-breaking volumes.

Read more: 45% of US Online Merchants Want One-Click Checkout Solutions

Building Customer Loyalty Through Returns

A frictionless returns process has become as critical to customer retention as fast shipping. Increasingly, this positions the holiday returns season as not merely a logistical hurdle but a litmus test for a retailer’s ability to deliver on its brand promise.

Consumers shopping directly from retailers are disproportionately likely to factor in how easy and convenient a given merchant’s return and refund procedures are when shopping from a retailer’s website or app, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and Adobe collaboration, “The Online Features Driving Consumers to Shop With Brands, Retailers or Marketplaces.”

In one novel example of brand building, Azechi Foods Company Ltd., a Japanese  wholesaler of popcorn, uses its own edible popcorn products as a replacement for conventional packaging materials like cardboard and Styrofoam.

But beyond fun campaigns and stunts, it is technology that is playing an increasingly pivotal role in redefining how retailers approach returns. Innovations like blockchain-based item tracking could provide unprecedented visibility into the returns journey, benefiting both retailers and customers. According to a PYMNTS Intelligence report, “From Transaction to Transformation: Blockchain’s Loyalty Proposition,” a collaboration with Solana, the loyalty industry is changing due to the integration of blockchain technology.

Meanwhile, generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to deliver hyper-personalized customer interactions, whether through chatbots or tailored policy adjustments.

Ultimately, “Returnuary” is more than a retail headache — it’s a microcosm of the holiday retail cycle, where brilliance meets the bizarre. Whether it’s AI streamlining the process or the occasional turkey finding its way back to a store shelf, the season highlights the evolving relationship between consumers and brands in the age of convenience.

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