What Is Staging & How Do You Combat These Returns In E-Commerce?

Are you wondering what staging is and how you can handle it in your e-commerce store?

If you offer premium products and have a generous returns policy, chances are, some of your consumers are engaging in staging.

In this article, we’ll go over what staging is, what its repercussions are, and how you can deal with the issue so you can minimise your return costs.

💡 We’ll also cover our internal data and investigation into the topic from our survey of 2,000 consumers in the UK.

What Is Staging In E-Commerce?

Staging in e-commerce refers to the consumer practice of purchasing an item to create content on social media and then returning it, usually for free.

This is typically done by people in their 20s and 30s when buying high-end designer products, with the end goal to produce envy-inducing posts on platforms like Instagram or TikTok.

Our internal data shows that a third of Generation Z consumers were guilty of staging in 2022, and a close rate to that (26%) in 2023.

We consider staging to be done predominately by a returner cohort we call serial returners.

Serial returners are shoppers who return a good amount of their products and are sometimes purchasing with the intention of returning all or some of the items they bought.

Is Staging Fraud?

Staging is not quite fraud. It's definitely close to fraud if the intent is purely to give the impression they have finalised the purchase. However, it is an abuse of a generous returns policy, and in most cases is something a retailer should look to minimise from happening.

Consumers are essentially using your premium products for a short period of time so they can generate likes and comments on social media to then return the products for free.

In ZigZag's Returns Fraud Scale, we have placed staging in the ‘’Abuse’’ section, since it may not be illegal, but it still taking advantage of your returns policy.

On the other hand, wardrobing should be considered a fraudulent activity, since shoppers are going out of their way to wear your products in public and then return them for free.

What Is Staging Costing Retailers?

Staging occurs most often in the clothing industry, where out of £47.6 billion worth of online purchases, a total of £9.6 billion worth of products is being returned.

As for the footwear industry, £1.4 billion worth of online purchases are being returned from £7.7 billion.

Our internal data further shows that 15% of consumers admitted to having bought clothing or footwear online to showcase on social media. In other words, staging.

If we combine the returns of the footwear and fashion industry and use 15% as a reference for staging, that means as much as £1.65 billion a year worth of stock is being used for staging in the UK.

And the staggering part? The practice of staging skyrockets to 26% amongst Gen Z shoppers.

Isn’t Staging Good Since It Increases Brand Awareness?

Despite consumers posting your brand’s logo on their social media accounts, creating envy around owning your product, return costs and more complicated logistics will often result in losing money from the excessive returns.

Some consumers may have a social media following that results in sales that more than offset the returns cost of the initial staging, but that is better managed and controlled by the retailer through an influencer marketing campaign.

➡️ There are also long-term consequences to this. If consumers are getting away with staging, they will most likely do it more often.

Some of the retailers we work with have expressed their concerns about their increased costs of returns.

💡 If your brand is fine with ‘’paying’’ for brand exposure in such a manner, that’s okay, but if you want to minimise the costs of staging on your online store, read on.

How To Deal With Staging In Your Online Store?

You can deal with staging in your online store by:

• Charging for returning products, also known as paid returns.
• Closing customer accounts with higher-than-acceptable return rates.
• Revisiting your returns policy to limit free shipping.
• Identifying suspicious behaviour using AI and predictive analytics.
• Offering the option to pre-purchase the returns label.
• Offer rental clothing

Let’s go over our proposed solutions to staging in a bit more detail: 👇

Start Charging For Returns (Paid Returns)

The best way to battle staging is to start charging consumers for returns.

Paid returns are when you ask shoppers to pay a small fee to return their product to cover the costs of returns.

This helps ensure consumers are not taking advantage of free returns to your premium products so they can boast on social media, free of charge.

💡 For optimal results, you can combine paid returns with a free ‘’return-to-store’’ option so the return will be free for both your brand and the consumer.

This is the approach we recommend to the merchants we work with when they ask us how they can deal with serial returners.

You might be thinking that not many consumers would appreciate the idea of paid returns, but when we interviewed 2,000 shoppers, we found that this is not the case.

Our research found that 50% of serial returners are happy paying for returns and that there’s a 32% rise in paid returns since 2023.

Results: Brands we work with were able to reduce the cost of their returns by up to 57% after implementing paid returns.

💡 Fact: We have not experienced any merchants saying that sales have dropped since the introduction of paid returns.

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Here are some of the reasons why we have been recommending our merchants to adopt paid returns:

• Returned costs are covered so your online store is not on the losing end from staging.
• Serial returners can’t exploit the free returns policy to engage in staging.
• As for the other shoppers, that would encourage them to consider how certain they are about purchasing your products online.

Interested in how much your brand can save with paid returns? You can check out our Paid Returns calculator.

Close Customer Accounts With Higher-Than-Normal Return Rates

The next thing you can do is to start identifying and closing customer accounts with higher-than-acceptable return rates.

These will be the shoppers who have been buying and returning dozens of products on your website – and kept a small fraction of them. This is reportedly the stance taken by a number of high-profile retailers in 2024 including PrettyLittleThing.

Our internal data shows that even though serial returners account for only 11% of shoppers, they are generating 24% of the returns, on average.

This is not to say that you should close 11% of your accounts but to evaluate which ones of 11% of shoppers have legitimate reasons for returns and which ones of them are gaining likes on social media on behalf of your generous returns policy.

➡️ There might be reasons why customers have a high return rate, such as shoppers who engage in bracketing.

This is when they purchase multiple items of different sizes so they can choose which one fits them best and then return the other ones.

These customers should not be banned from your store.

Your brand should be focusing on customers who are not retaining items they are buying and returning.

Revisit Your Returns Policy and Products

Another thing you can do to battle staging is to revisit your returns policy.

Are you indirectly encouraging staging?

One fix that might take a little training and changes to the manufacturing process would be to make tags more visible. This might be far easier to suggest on a returns blog than it is to implement in real life, but can you make it tougher to pose with goods without showing the tags and labels?

Reflect these changes in your returns policy and/or make returns conditions stricter.

Missing labels and tags should make products ineligible for returns, or only eligible for store credit refunds.

It’s unlikely shortening returns policy lengths will impact staging consumers, as it doesn’t take long to set up an Instagram story. Additionally, whilst reducing free shipping and free returns might reduce staging by making it more expensive to do, normally its done for high-cost products, so it’s still cheaper to stage than to buy regardless of shipping and returns fees.

Using AI for predicting bracketing behaviour.

We discussed the use of technology to accurately detect, predict, and mitigate returns related fraud in another blog.

The better you understand your customers, the better chance you have of targeting the real returns policy abusers and keeping your loyal customers happy and unaffected by changes.

We recommend segmenting customers where possible by rewarding the low returners with shipping and returns-related promotions and getting tougher with high returners.

It probably isn’t wise to start tracking customers social media for staging just yet…it’s a little creepy.

Offer The Option To Pre-Purchase The Returns Label

Last but not least, you can minimise the cost of returns by offering the option to pre-purchase the returns label.

If you warn customers that they will have to pay for the return, you can offer them a discounted version of paid returns, which is paying for the return label beforehand.

Our internal data shows that 50.6% of serial returners are likely to pay upfront for a return to reduce their costs.

Offer rental clothing

Rental is a growing sector.

In fact, 10% of revenues for luxury brands are expected to be comprised of rental sales by 2030.

For luxury retailers suffering from high return rates, suspecting that their consumers are posting their items online only to return for a full refund, why not look into the rental market. If you can’t beat them join them.

By offering rental, consumers can legitimately post the products without the unethical guilt of abusing a returns policy, and retailers can turn staging into a revenue stream.

Next Steps: Reduce The Impact of Staging In Your Store With ZigZag

Even if you incorporate paid returns, Instagram influencers or TikTok "celebrities" will still purchase your products to show them to their audience.

Despite the fact that we cannot completely stop staging, merchants can at least recover some of their return costs and better manage their inventories.

Our returns platform offers a few approaches to minimise the impact of staging:

• Offer paid returns so you can discourage staging or at least cover the costs of your return.
• Offer free returns, as long as they come to your store and return the products in person.
• Analytics so you can figure out who the customers are who are engaging in staging.
• Offer customers the option to pre-purchase the return label if they are sure that they will return the product.

Book a demo with our team to learn more about how our platform can help you deal with bracketing, staging, and wardrobing.

Book a demo with ZigZag