Brits wear clothes once for ‘hashtag moment’ before returning items

Almost one in 10 Brits have bought clothes online to wear once with the aim of posting a photo to social media and then returning their purchases.

This figure rises to almost one in five among 35-44 year olds (17%), the biggest percentage of any age group. According to Barclaycard the rise of the ‘try before you buy’ policy, which allows shoppers to order clothes online and only buy them if they decide to keep them, may be contributing to the ‘snap and send back’ trend.         

Research by the credit card company has also revealed that men spend more on fashion than women, with male spending on clothes and shoes totalling £114 per person each month, equating to over £300 per person more than women a year.

George Allardice, head of strategy at Barclaycard, said: “It’s interesting to see the social media trend further fuelling the returns culture. We know from our research that returns are having a big impact on retailers, with a huge figure of seven billion pounds a year in sales that they potentially can’t recognise.

“Retailers are adopting new processes to make returns easier as they know how important this is to customers. But to ensure shoppers are getting more wear out of their clothes – for posting on social media or for those real-life moments – retailers could think about introducing more varied photography and video content to their websites.

“By showing how to style items for different looks and how they will appear when worn, they could reduce the number of shoppers ‘snapping and sending back’.”