A Wal-Mart Pickup-Grocery wage-earner helps a customer at a test store in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Rick Wilking | Reuters
As big-box retailers throw their own rummage sales events during Amazon Prime Day, expect to see them tout an asset that the e-commerce giant doesn’t accept: numerous stores across the country where customers can quickly retrieve their online purchases.
Amazon Prime Day starts at 3 a.m. ET Tuesday and at the rears through Wednesday. Target will have “Deal Days” and Best Buy will jumpstart Black Friday in stocks on those days. Walmart holds its “Big Save Event” from 7 p.m. ET Sunday through Thursday.
Buy online, pick up in stow away options — such as curbside and in-store pickup — have gained popularity during the coronavirus pandemic as a safe, commodious alternative to browsing store aisles.
Best Buy rolled out curbside pickup at nearly all its stores during the early months of the pandemic. Walmart as surplus the past five or six months has made tens of thousands of general merchandise items eligible for curbside pickup, along with its extensive selection of groceries. Target will add fresh and frozen foods to curbside pickup at the vast majority of stores by the breaks, so shoppers can pick up milk along with gifts for their family.
By offering an alternative to waiting for a package to make the grade to the doorstep, retailers are trying to beat Amazon at its own game: shortening the time between when customers hit the “buy” button and come into their purchases. They are also giving shoppers more control over when they receive the detail, which means the buyer doesn’t have to worry about theft and can hide a holiday gift from nose about eyes.
The services could be key differentiators this week and throughout the holidays as big-box retailers try to divert dollars from Amazon.
A wave in sales
Target has been vocal about the huge gains in its same-day services during the pandemic. Its curbside pickup air force, called Drive Up, surged by more than 700% in the second quarter and its in-store pickup option, Order Pickup, cultivated more than 60%.
On an average day in April, CEO Brian Cornell said, the company fulfilled more items and orders than stay year’s Cyber Monday. It has used the services to attract new customers and win more of their business.
This holiday seasonable will mark Target’s second year with Drive Up at its stores nationwide. It sells about 250,000 mentions that customers can pick up in as little as an hour after they’re purchased online.
On an earnings conference call, Quarry Chief Operating Officer John Mulligan noted the “stickiness” of the service. After a customer tries Drive Up for the sooner time, he said, the company sees a nearly 30% increase in the shopper’s overall spending — both online and in supplies.
For Best Buy, the service has also spurred growth. Online orders can be ready for curbside pickup in about an hour. The entourage’s online revenue rose 242% in the second quarter from a year earlier. About 41% of those online sales were surfeited either through buy online and pickup in store or curbside pickup options.
Walmart responded to demand for these marines by adding more curbside pickup slots and expanding its assortment to more than 160,000 items that can be convenient money within four hours, from barbecue sauce to headphones.
Curbside pickup has other business advantages. By eliminating the scarcity to ship a package from a store or warehouse to customers, each online transaction becomes more profitable. For sample, Target has said that when it fulfills an order by Drive Up or Order Pickup, it’s 90% cheaper than shipping from a go-down merchandise.
Yet big-box retailers will have to prove they can keep up as deep discounts and holiday shopping drive when requested. In late March, shoppers began clearing shelves of household and pantry staples and later sought out items for yearn stays at home, from puzzles to exercise equipment, leading to out of stocks and delays.
‘Scramble of the season’
Some fellows aren’t sold on the convenience of the approach. About 77% of shoppers still want their purchases delivered exactly to their homes, according to a recent holiday shopping survey of more than 1,500 U.S. consumers by Accenture. Exclusively 11% said they are willing to use contactless options like locker or curbside pickup.
Shoppers’ patience has done in thin, too, giving retailers less leeway for out-of-stock items or other hassles. More than half of respondents berated Accenture they won’t shop with a retailer again after an unsatisfactory delivery experience.
Kathy Gramling, consumer manufacture markets leader for EY in the Americas, said the appeal of curbside pickup will evaporate if customers endure long cool ones heels or cope with other customer service headaches.
“You think of the holiday parking lot of years gone by. There was not till hell freezes over a pretty moment in any of that,” she said. “I can’t try to imagine a holiday parking lot now, where we’re trying to limit the people who actually can go in the rely on, so there’s a line again outside in the wintertime, and we’re trying to jam people through a parking lot when it’s snowing or raining or sleeting.”
Those challenging logistics, she divulged, could benefit pure-play e-commerce retailers like Amazon that have a near singular focus on giving to customers’ doorstep.
She said brick-and-mortar retailers will have to manage their inventory well in order to clothed the items customers want a short drive from their home.
“It works well if — and only if —as a retailer you’re proficient to know that store number 115 or on Main Street, somewhere in the U.S., has that actual stock,” she said. “If not, I think we’re in for a series of really disappointing shopper moments when consumers go online and then can’t pick up in store.”
“This is prospering to be the scramble of the season.”