We all know resale has emerged as a major shopping category over the past few years, but did you know just how big it is and what’s working for consumers right now?
Well, according to a new report by Morning Consult, about half (46%) of adults in the US have purchased something secondhand, while 26% have sold a secondhand product in the last three months.
Naturally, some categories are doing better than others, like clothing which topped the list (67%), followed by products including books, games, and furniture. But when it came to apparel, most shoppers were likely to spend $50 or less on it unless it was a luxury item.
“The way we treat apparel has changed so dramatically in the last few decades that it is seen as more of a ‘one and done,’ or just wear something a few times and then move on from it, as opposed to just having a much smaller wardrobe,” Claire Tassin, Morning Consult’s retail and e-commerce analyst who also authored the report, told Retail Brew. “There’s just a lot of desire to always have something new, and then when stuff does make it into the secondhand market, then there’s a lot of appetite to buy that.”
She added that saving money and being thriftier was a top motivator for people, whether they were shopping for clothes, books, or furniture.
In fact, 22% of those surveyed said they shopped secondhand because they couldn’t afford new items, while 57% said they purchased secondhand items for other reasons but still valued being able to save money.
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“Oftentimes we think about the secondhand shopper as someone who is trying to find something really stylish or something that not everyone else has, or they’re very eco-focused, far and away, it’s really just like a saving money thing for most people,” Tassin added. “The other attributes are more of a bonus factor, if you will, at least at the top level.”
Second chances: And while saving some cash seems to be enough of a motivator for keeping the secondhand market thriving, it’s of course not without its challenges, chief among them, frustrations with the returns process or brand authentication.
Indeed, 38% of the shoppers who did not purchase secondhand products said their primary concern was not being able to trust that the items would arrive in the “promised condition,” followed by returns not being honored (31%), and not being able to trust if the items would arrive at all (27%).
“A lot of the attention has rightfully been in this space in the e-commerce side of the industry, and that is where a lot of these challenges still lie,” Tassin said. “Just because almost half of Americans are shopping secondhand fairly frequently does not mean that it’s excluded, that the growth is exclusively coming from e-commerce.”
She added that for the secondhand e-commerce market to continue to grow, “these trust gaps are really where these platforms need to focus, on what kind of tech and improvements can help to continue to drive that growth and overcome some of those barriers.”