A new survey commissioned by Barclaycard has found almost one in 10 UK shoppers admit to buying clothing only to take a photo on social media.
Once they’ve photographed the “outfit of the day” style post, the clothes are then returned back to the store.
Within the survey of 2,002 adults, shoppers aged 35-44 are most likely to do this, and men outnumbered women.
Of 35-44 year olds, nearly one in five admitted they had bought clothes to wear once for the “hashtag moment”.
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What’s more, 10 per cent of men surveyed said they would feel embarrassed for a friend to see them in the same outfit twice, compared to seven per cent of women.
According to Barclaycard, the “try before you buy” strategies many online retailers have undertaken to appeal to customers wishing to try on clothes at home could be contributing to this trend.
“It’s interesting to see the social media trend further fuelling the returns culture,” said Barclaycard head of strategy George Allardice.
“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’,” Allardice added.
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