The insight: Higher-income shoppers are more likely to make returns, according to an analysis of credit and debit card data from Bank of America.

• Their return rate in 2025 to date stands at 5.3%, significantly above the 3.7% rate of low-income shoppers.
• The average across income and demographic cohorts stands at 4.5%.

The theories: Several factors help explain why higher-income shoppers are more likely to send goods back.

• One is that those consumers tend to spend more on discretionary items, which have higher return rates than other categories.
• Another theory is that wealthier shoppers are more inclined to buy speculatively—taking a chance on a product they’re not sure about or engaging in practices like wardrobing to find the perfect style and fit.

Fraud could also be a possibility: 1 in 4 higher-income shoppers engaged in some kind of first-party fraud during the holiday season—such as disputing legitimate credit card charges or falsely claiming packages were stolen—compared with just 11% of lower-income consumers, according to a survey by Socure.

Why it matters: Many retailers see wealthier clientele as the answer to otherwise sluggish sales—but as the elevated returns rates suggest, cultivating these shoppers can drive up expenses.

Tightening returns policies isn’t an option given the very real possibility of alienating those shoppers. Companies will instead have to invest in tools like AR try-on to reduce the need for wardrobing and fraud-detection capabilities to identify abusive behavior.

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