68 percent of products returned because they do not meet expectations
The report by technology consulting and outsourcing firm Accenture pegs
the costs of consumer electronics returns in 2007 at $13.8 billion in
the United States alone, with return rates ranging from 11 percent to
20 percent, depending on the type of product.Accenture estimates that 68 percent of returns are products that
work properly but do not meet customers’ expectations for some reason.
“Either they thought it was defective when it wasn’t, or there was an
expectation gap,” says Accenture executive Terry Steger.Steger believes that the return rates for
functional products would decline significantly if vendors and
retailers invested more in making them easier to set up and use, and
in educating buyers.
From:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,146576-c,pcreliabilityservice/article.html
I sense that this is largely due to poor user experience. My personal
experience was with the Samsung Sch-u740. It was a flip phone with a
full querty keyboard. It SMS-texted well and was a decent phone where
it counts. BUT, it boasted many multimedia features which were
completely infuriating to use, when they worked. I won’t go into the minutia, but it seemed hastily built, half-baked, and completely inconsistent - as if <gasp> several different engineering teams built them independently, without any overarching UX guidance.
