Lax Return Policies will Impact Super Bowl LIII TV Sales

The 2019 Super Bowl kicks off at 6:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, February 3. The playoffs are underway and the big event is only a few weeks out. For many sports fans, the Super Bowl represents a great time to buy a new TV. As of last year, it was estimated that close to 120 million homes in the U.S. have at least one television and that 229 million TV units were sold in 2017.

It’s no longer a secret that during Super Bowl season the practice of wardrobing TVs increases. Last year B-Stock reported that TV returns jumped 217 percent from the fourth to first quarter (we looked at listings of returned TVs across our network of marketplaces). 

For retailers, that means having an easy-to-understand and quick-to-process return policy—even one that comes at a cost—to keeps customers happy and coming back.

Many retailers are offering full refunds with no questions asked. It’s common for return policies to state that any purchased item can be returned through either the retail store or online store. This omnichannel approach is a key retail trend for 2019. While some retailers might offer limited windows of time to return a purchase for any reason, those who plan to return their Super Bowl TV only need a day a two.

For Super Bowl LIII, retailers will likely have to contend with even more TV returns than ever before; having a plan in place to offset the costs of processing, sorting, warehousing, and shipping returned TVs is an essential part of preparing for the day-after-the-Super-Bowl. Another important aspect is what to do with the item once it comes back to the warehouse. In most cases, returned TVs can’t be sold a second time as ‘new,’ so having a secondary market solution in place is a must.

To learn more about how some of the biggest consumer electronics retailers liquidate their excess and returned inventory, check out our marketplaces and read through a few case studies.

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