NRF and Happy Returns found that retailers expect 17% of holiday sales to come straight back to them. That's not a logistics footnote. It's the difference between a good December and a flat quarter.

Their October 2025 research runs on two surveys: 358 ecommerce professionals at US merchants above $500 million in revenue, and 2,006 consumers who had made an online return in the past year. It projects full-year returns at 15.8% of sales, or $849.9 billion, with an estimated 19.3% of online sales sent back.

So every retailer now faces the same decision about how to reduce holiday returns, whether or not they've framed it as one: do you make returning harder, or do you make the first purchase better?

Cost pressure is pushing hard toward the first answer. Here's the case for the second, with the criteria to judge both.

How to Reduce Holiday Returns: Four Approaches Compared

There are broadly four things a retailer can do about a rising return rate. They're not equally good, and they don't fail in the same direction.

Those middle columns are directional judgments about what each approach is built to do, not measured outcomes. No published study puts these four head to head, so use the table to frame the decision rather than to settle it.

Cost is what pushes retailers toward the first row. NRF found the top reasons retailers charge for returns are the cost of processing them (40%), carrier shipping costs (40%) and economic uncertainty and tariff risk (33%). What retailers say they actually plan for the holidays, though, is mostly the second row: leaning harder on third-party logistics partners (49%), hiring seasonal staff (43%) and extending return windows (37%).

Notice what's missing from both lists. Nothing in them changes the purchase that caused the return. Rows one and two move the cost around. Row three prevents returns where sizing is the culprit. Row four is the one that works on expectation gaps, which is where the returns that aren't about fit come from, and it's the row almost nobody resources properly.

The Criteria That Should Decide It

Before you pick, be honest about what you're optimizing for. Three questions sort it quickly.

Are your returns a fit problem or an expectation problem? Fit problems respond to measurement tools. Expectation problems respond to conversation. Pull your last quarter of return reasons and look at the split before you buy anything.

What happens to the customer after the return? A return doesn't end the relationship unless you let it. Four out of five shoppers say they'd tell friends and family about a bad returns experience, according to NRF and Happy Returns, so the damage doesn't stop at the refund.

Can your team execute it in the weeks you've got before peak? Anything needing a long implementation won't touch this holiday season. That's an argument for what your associates can start using in days, not a platform migration.

Returns Are the Aftermath of a Missed Conversation

Returns get treated as a logistics problem, a natural consequence of a busy season, inevitable and mostly about paperwork.

Underneath it sits a simpler story: the customer and the product never fully understood each other. Maybe the fit was wrong. Maybe the fabric felt different than expected. Maybe it looked great online and wrong in daylight. Maybe it was bought with optimism, ambition or gifting pressure rather than clarity of purpose.

Returns are the cost of uncertainty in the shopping experience, and uncertainty is what clienteling exists to remove. Clienteling means a personalized shopping experience that works like a concierge service. The customer should already know what they're getting, how it fits in real life and where it sits in the rest of their wardrobe.

A return means that didn't happen.

Easy Returns Matter, But They Aren't the Goal

Shoppers value easy returns, and the data isn't subtle about it. Free returns are an important consideration for 82% of people shopping online, according to NRF and Happy Returns, up from 76% a year earlier. Three quarters say they're more likely to choose a return option giving them an instant refund or exchange. Read those as the views of people who return things, since that's who was surveyed.

Retailers have noticed too. In the 2024 edition of the same research, 40% of retailers said a better returns experience leads to more spending with their brand.

Here's the part that stings: even the easiest return means the first purchase missed. Nobody wakes up excited to print a return label. Easy returns soften the disappointment. They don't erase it, and they don't recover the margin. NRF's own numbers run mostly in the negative direction here: a bad returns experience drives shoppers away, while a good one mostly avoids doing damage.

Frictionless returns are table stakes, not strategy. The better goal is fewer returns that needed to happen at all.

The Holiday Effect: Why Returns Spike So Hard

Holiday shopping is a near-perfect returns generator. People buy outside their usual categories. They shop on tighter timelines. They buy for other people, guessing at size, taste and lifestyle. They buy aspirational things for a future version of themselves who hosts dinner parties and suddenly loves tailoring.

The spike is real, and it's narrower than the panic suggests. Adobe Analytics data reported by Chain Store Age put one in every eight returns in the 2024 holiday season inside the six days from December 26 to December 31, with rates running 8% to 15% above the season's first six weeks through the first two weeks of January. That will strain a skeleton crew over the holidays. It isn't your whole returns problem, and treating it as one is how teams end up buying reverse logistics capacity they use for three weeks a year.

The forces behind them don't clock off in February either. The holidays amplify what's already there, which is why a holiday clienteling program pays for itself well past January.

Where Clienteling Reduces Returns

People buy better when they feel understood. Give associates a way to remember preferences, read intent and reach out before the purchase, and customers stop guessing. When customers stop guessing, fewer parcels come back.

Three things do the heavy lifting.

Appointments: Confidence Is the Best Anti-Return Policy

The intervention with the shortest path to a prevented return is also the most human: talking to someone before they buy.

Appointments change the tone of shopping immediately. Instead of browsing blind or panic-buying, the customer walks into a guided conversation. They talk through what they need, where they'll wear it, how they like things to fit and what they already own. The associate stops selling to the customer and starts choosing with them.

This matters because many returns are misalignment rather than dissatisfaction. The product wasn't bad. It wasn't right. A short conversation upfront removes weeks of reverse logistics later, and it heads off one of the most expensive habits in retail: ordering three options intending to send two back.

Lookbooks: Setting Expectations Before the Box Arrives

The other big driver is expectation mismatch. Customers think they know what they're buying until it arrives, and a product photo is a poor substitute for the thing itself.

Shoppable Stories close that gap by showing products in context rather than in isolation. An associate can shoot the same piece in different light, styled different ways, worn by different people. The customer can ask for specifics. How formal is this? How does it move? Is this an everyday piece or a special-occasion one?

Those are the questions that turn into returns when nobody answers them. Answering them before checkout is cheaper than answering them after.

Messaging: The Questions Customers Almost Ask

Some of the most preventable returns come from questions the customer never asked.

• Is it sheer?
• Does it stretch?
• Is this forgiving or fitted?
• Would you wear this to work, or is it more weekend?

Shoppers hesitate to ask, because asking feels like slowing themselves down. Endear's messaging keeps that conversation open before and after the purchase, so a question doesn't become a regret.

When customers feel supported, they stop hedging. Hedging is what puts three sizes in one basket, and it's spreading as younger shoppers gain spending power. Happy Returns found 51% of Gen Z bracket their purchases, against 24% of baby boomers. A size guide won't fix that. A conversation will.

What to Measure, So You Know It Worked

This is where most returns projects fall over. Someone changes something, the return rate moves for unrelated reasons and nobody can tell whether it worked. Track four things instead of one.

1. Return rate on clienteled orders versus the rest. The comparison that isolates the effect. If orders coming through an appointment or a styling conversation return at a lower rate, you've got your answer.
2. Return reason mix. Fit, color, quality, changed mind. If fit returns hold steady while "changed mind" falls, guidance is landing and sizing is your next project.
3. Return rate by associate. Nobody enjoys this one, and it's the most useful of the four. You'll often find your strongest associates have the lowest return rates, and what they do differently can be taught.
4. Repeat purchase rate after a return. This tells you whether returns are ending relationships or just pausing them.

Watch all four against your own baseline, not an industry average. Return rates vary enormously by category, so a cross-category number says almost nothing about your business.

When Returns Still Happen

Some returns can't be prevented, and a few aren't even a bad outcome. A customer who sends back one item in four and keeps buying beats one who buys once and never comes back.

What separates retailers who handle this well is that they treat the return as a moment in a relationship rather than an exit. They catch issues early with a proactive check-in, before the customer has mentally committed to sending it back. They train associates to keep the conversation warm during an in-store return. They follow up afterwards with something relevant instead of letting the story end at the refund.

Handled that way, a return stops being revenue walking out of the door and becomes the reason someone walks back in.

Less Uncertainty, Fewer Returns, More Loyalty

Easy returns build trust. Clienteling builds loyalty, which pays for a lot longer.

When a customer believes an associate understands their style and their life, they shop differently. They buy with more confidence, send less back and come back more often. They stop treating shopping as trial and error and start treating it as a relationship, and relationships survive the occasional bad purchase.

Clienteling also tells you why returns happen, which no return policy will ever do. That counts for more in 2026, with tighter margins and shoppers who are quicker to walk.

Your holiday returns may peak in January, but they expose a year-round truth: returns are the cost of uncertainty. You can charge customers for that uncertainty, or you can remove it. Only one of those earns a second purchase.

Because the best return policy isn't the easiest one. It's the one customers rarely need.

Frequently Asked Questions

What percentage of holiday sales get returned?

Retailers expect 17% of holiday sales to be returned, according to NRF and Happy Returns' October 2025 research. Across the full year, the projected rate is 15.8% of all retail sales, rising to an estimated 19.3% for online orders.

Does charging for returns reduce them?

It reduces the returns you see. It's a separate question whether it reduces the returns you cause, and the risk sits on the other side of the ledger: 71% of shoppers say a poor returns experience makes them less likely to buy from that retailer again. If your fee is what makes the experience poor, you've traded a return for a customer.

What's the quickest way to cut holiday returns before December?

Pre-purchase guidance, because it needs no implementation. Appointments, styled lookbooks and open messaging can start this week with the team you've already got, and they target the expectation gap that drives the returns sizing tools can't catch.

How do I know whether my returns program is working?

Compare the return rate on clienteled orders against everything else, and watch your return reason mix. If "changed mind" falls while fit stays flat, the guidance is landing and sizing is your next fix.

Fewer returns come from customers who buy with confidence, and that confidence comes from conversations before the purchase, not fees after it. See Endear in action and find out how your associates can start those conversations this season.