B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Dated
18.1%
18.1% -- ecommerce return rate for items purchased online (2020)
According to the National Retail Federation, 18.1% of items purchased online in 2020 were returned.
Attribution:
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Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
18.1%
Unit
Percentage
Data Vintage
2020
Entity
Evidence Quality
B
Strong, reliable evidence
Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.
Single source - not yet corroborated
Score breakdown
Extraction
95
Source Trust
50
Citation Chain
90
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
92
Sources (2)
National Retail Federation
Primary
Tier A
https://redstagfulfillment.com/best-practices-e-commerce-returns/?utm_content=231580173&utm_medium=s… ↗
Source Article
Ecommerce returns and refunds: best practices Red Stag Fulfillment
You’ve worked hard to differentiate yourself from the competition: You offer superb products and top-notch customer service coupled with exceptional order fulfillment. That all adds up to unbeatable value for your customer. But is your policy on eCommerce returns working against you, rather than for…
Also cited by
Red Stag Fulfillment
https://redstagfulfillment.com/best-practices-e-commerce-returns/
2026-08-03
Original Research
National Retail Federation
· Original study ↗
Methodology
National Retail Federation report
Methodology documented
Segmentation
Channelcommon_crawl
Cite this stat
Plain Text
items purchased online: 18.1% ecommerce return rate. Source: National Retail Federation (2020). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/ecommerce-return-rate-2020
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<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/ecommerce-return-rate-2020" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>18.1%</strong> -- ecommerce return rate for items purchased online<br><small>Source: National Retail Federation (2020) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/ecommerce-return-rate-2020" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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