Love shopping online but hate waiting to receive your purchase? So do millions of consumers. “Click and collect” shopping provides a solution. Consumers can browse and purchase online to save time and avoid crowds. Then, rather than waiting on shipping, they select the store pick-up option. Following a visit to the retailer, their purchases are in hand.
This new shopping experience is quickly gaining momentum with consumers. According to an exclusive survey conducted for CNBC by InfoScout, 49 percent of Americans tried click and collect for the first time in 2015. Top click and collect retailers included Walmart, Best Buy, Target, Kmart and Macy’s.
How do retailers feel about click and collect? Quite simply, it’s viewed as a way for brick-and-mortar shops to actively compete with online-only retailers. In a highly competitive marketplace, physical storefronts offer a valued benefit online-only retailers don’t — the ability to get the product in hand quickly.
An additional benefit to retailers is increased purchase volume when online shoppers collect purchases in store. According to the International Council of Shopping Centers, 69 percent of shoppers who clicked and collected during the 2015 holiday season purchased additional items while picking up in store. When discussing Macy’s click and collect success, Macy’s CEO explained, “[A consumer] is going to spend about 125 percent of what she intended to spend, that's just been the track record.”
Click and collect holds growth potential for community financial institutions (FIs), too, perhaps offering an opportunity to provide valued payment options and features. Its popularity draws focus to digital payment authentication and processing guidelines, such as tokenization.
As retailers strive to increase their bottom lines, they’ll have to continue evolving to meet consumer demands — so will FIs as they position themselves to take advantage of consumer’s increasingly digital shopping trends.
