Friday, February 21, 2020

Consumers Continue to be Enticed by Click and Collect


A recent article on emarketer expounded on the rapidly growing popularity of click and collect. According to the article, almost 9 in 10 US internet users expressed interest in picking up their online order at the register (according to a National Retail Federation survey in October 2019). Among participants in the survey who had tried this service, click and collect was also the most popular choice followed by curbside pickup. According to a September 2019 survey from Field Agent, 51% of US online shoppers considered themselves very or entirely likely to use click and collect this past holiday season.
         Click and collect is especially popular among the big-box retailers such as Walmart, Target, and Best Buy. These retailers have build advanced click-and-collect operations that have contributed to these types of orders representing an increasingly larger share of online sales (rising from 19% in Q4 2017 to 22.5% in Q3 2019 according to Rakuten Intelligence).
         The article goes on to illustrate the importance of click and collect further by explaining how Target CEO Brian Cornell singled out the activity during an earnings call last year, citing that it was a key source of the Target’s momentum. This shouldn’t come as a surprise as services and options that give the end consumer increased speed and convenience are easily becoming the preferred fulfillment choices for these consumers (e.g. such as same day delivery).
        The rise of click and collect is something I would expect to continue as the online consumer persists in desiring a better shopping experience with increasingly faster delivery fulfillment and convenience. Aside from retailers investing the resources needed to even offer this shopping option, they must also invest in the marketing and site assets to properly inform the consumer that this option is available. Target especially does an excellent job of this (seen in the third image below as an example). On Target’s site, they clearly display same day delivery on their navigation as a shopping option while showing in the upper left corner, the store hours of the consumer’s closest store.














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