This Is The Most Returned Holiday Gift

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 27, 7:46AM EST

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This Is The Most Returned Holiday Gift — © JulNichols / Getty Images

This holiday is over, for retailers. The tally of sales is grim for brick and mortar. Holiday spending rose 3%, but it was driven by a 49% rise in e-commerce. For another year, foot traffic fell. 2020 was simply worse than others, due in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As MasterCard SpendingPulse reported the 3% rise, its researchers pointed out that the figure was at the low end of most forecasts. And, the mix of consumer shopping patterns changed considerably. Steve Sadove, senior advisor for Mastercard and former CEO and Chairman of Saks Incorporated, said “American consumers turned the holiday season on its head, redefining ‘home for the holidays’ in a uniquely 2020 way. They shopped from home for the home, leading to record e-commerce growth.”

What has not changed is that Americans return million of gifts each year, in exchange for other gifts, for cash, or store credit. The National Retail Federation put the total value of returned gifts last year at $309 billion, which is about 8% of all gifts sold.

On the NRF list of gifts returned by category, shoes were at the top. “Footwear” returned were 15.8% of their total sales. The category was followed by “apparel” at 12.5%.

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The “shoe return” data was given additional credence by a study Veritas Gifts and published by House Beautiful. The research also gave the reasons why:

Coming in at the top of the list is shoes, as the study found that people are gifted styles they don’t like. Another reason they get returned is that people aren’t checking which size to buy beforehand.

Shoe retailers have tried to keep the return rate down with several aids that help people buy the right shoes. Among them are “shoe size charts”. These allow people who shop online to determine their size by region. The U.S., Europe, and the U.K. use different measures. Another method is photos of shoes in each color and style they come in.

However, the flaws of the system are such that retailers acknowledge them. Foot Locker, for example, offers this option on its website: “Your satisfaction is guaranteed. We promise the items you order will fit right or you can return them for free.” It calls this its “Fit Guarantee” policy.

And, even if consumers know their own shoe sizes, the people who buy them shoes as gifts may not, which only compounds the problem.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.