Royal Mail¹ research has revealed a new breed of smart shoppers that are more experienced and confident in utilising their knowledge to create their own ideal shopping experience when buying online. This has led to the emergence of a series of new online shopping behaviour types including Returns Addict, Bargain Hunter, Duplicate Dealer and Swap Shopper.

The study - Delivery Matters Returns Special - which was conducted to coincide with the launch of the company’s new Tracked Returns service - found that nearly 1 in 6 (16%) now do virtually all their shopping online. The new Royal Mail Tracked Returns service improves the experience of returning online purchases for both retailers and customers. It allows customers to easily print off a returns label and monitor the progress of their item while giving retailers full visibility of what exactly is being returned, from which customer and for what reason.

When it comes to choosing an online retailer, free returns is a key factor for shoppers with three quarters (73%) admitting that they would expect free returns as standard, while a further 1 in 3 (34%) would be very or extremely unlikely to use an online retailer again if they were charged to send unwanted items back.

Returns Addict

Returns Addicts love sampling all that online shopping has to offer, safe in the knowledge that they can return products if they are not quite right. Women over 55 living in rural locations are the masters of the return with over three quarters (76%) saying that they recently returned personal purchases.

The most popular products to return are:

1. Women’s clothes (30%)
2. Men’s clothes (17%)
3. Footwear (16%)
4. Children’s clothes (7%)
5. Electrical goods such TVs, radios (6%)

Duplicate Dealer

Excited at the prospect of trying before they buy, Duplicate Dealers like to make sure that they have exactly the right size for them with 1 in 10 (11%) choosing to buy more than one size of a single item. Women (13%) have the biggest online baskets with people in the Midlands proving to be the most frequent collector of multi sized clothing (14%).

Bargain Hunter

These smart shoppers know how to find a bargain whether it is returns or buy one gets one free. Young city dwellers aged from 18 to 34 are the biggest deal hunters with 6% saying that they continue to look for a better price even after their purchase has arrived.

Read More

Source: Royal Mail Group