How does a retailer go online?
With the advent and success of e-commerce, retailers need to strategize better using various dynamic performance metrics to ensure that they stay afloat and mint a good profit. It is vital to stay up to date with competition and introduce various shopping schemes which would attract the customer. The mindset of a customer in large has changed over the years to adapt to the latest trends and technologies. The working class today prefers to shop online to save the hassle of travelling. A retailer who owning a big chain of shops would feel the pinch if all the shopping were to be done online. That pinch would eventually turn to a shove if he were to stop with just selling things physically without any online presence, but how does a retailer go online? Click and collect or unified commerce would be the perfect solution to such a scenario.
Click and Collect: The Concept
As the very name suggests, Click and collect is a service where in customers can shop online and pick up the purchased goods at their convenience, directly from the Retailer’s store. Few retailers go extra mile and offer pick up locations like secured lockers, post offices or other retailer’s store. In a sense, Click and Collect service combines choice and convenience of an online shopping with the comfort of retail shopping. From the viewpoint of a customer, it makes sense to see if the product one wishes to purchase is actually available with the retailer. Click and collect offers the flexibility absent with an online shopping experience. This service reduces the hassles of conventional online shopping like high costs, waiting for delivery, late deliveries and wrong deliveries. This type of service is predominantly popular during the festive and holiday season, where time is of utmost importance. It is close to impossible to expect punctual delivery or a relaxed in-store shopping experience amidst this frenzy. Thus, it makes sense to order online and pick it up from the retailer.
The Number Game
Statistics point that the Click and Collect service has gained immense popularity over the years. According to IMRG, the global share of Click and Collect orders has increased by 155% between 2011 and 2015. It has also been estimated that 47% of the global retailers already offer this service, while 51% have plans on the pipeline to implement this service over the next year or so. This implies that 98% of the surveyed retailers would offer this service by the end of 2018.
From the graph, it is evident that the Click and collect model is the most famous variation of the Buy Online, Purchase in store model. On the customer front, 35% of the global shoppers have used the Buy Online Pick up in store service at least once. Essentially, one out of every four shoppers had opted for this service because of various advantages this service offers. Consider this Scenario, in the UK, it has been reported by a popular survey that 60% of the customers ordering online faced delivery issues during the Christmas season last year. That would translate to about 225,000 failed delivery of parcels. This high rate of unreliability can be advantageous to boost the click and collect service.
Continue reading in Part 2
