B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Recent
16%
16% -- online purchase return rate for US retail ecommerce (2025)
Online retail purchases have a return rate between 16% and 20% according to an NRF report.
- Reported as a range of 16% to 20% across retail, climbing above 30% in apparel
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Lighthouse Research Team
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
16%
Unit
Percentage
Data Vintage
2025
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
75
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
60
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
95
Source
Source Article
Turning Returns into Revenue: The Next Frontier in Reverse Logistics
Returns Cost More Than You Think
Every day, millions of dollars in returned merchandise sit in warehouses, losing value by the hour.
Ecommerce returns management has become one of retail's most expensive problems. For decades, retailers have treated returns as an unavoidable drain on business. Accor…
Original Research
NRF
· Original study ↗
Methodology
NRF report cited by Nextuple; range 16%-20%, midpoint taken
Methodology documented
Segmentation
Industrymarketing
Cite this stat
Plain Text
US retail ecommerce: 16% online purchase return rate. Source: NRF (2025). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/online-purchase-return-rates-nrf
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<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/online-purchase-return-rates-nrf" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>16%</strong> -- online purchase return rate for US retail ecommerce<br><small>Source: NRF (2025) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/online-purchase-return-rates-nrf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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