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  [22]The Future of Shopping
  Is click-and-collect the future of shopping?
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  Click-and-collect shopping extends across many categories – from small
  coffee purchases to big construction supplies (Credit: Alamy)
  By Hilary George-Parkin 17th July 2020
  The Covid-19 crisis has sparked a rise in kerbside shopping options.
  Consumers like them, so will they stick around in a post-pandemic
  world?
  W

  When customers walk up to the front door of The Beguiling, a comic-book
  shop in Toronto, they’re greeted by [25]a yellow booth that blocks the
  entrance. It reads, “Bibliographic Help 5¢”. Here, an employee
  dispenses pick-up orders, answers questions and recommends titles.

  The counter is a play on Lucy’s iconic psychiatry booth from the
  Peanutscomic strip. It was the first image that came to owner Peter
  Birkemoe when he began considering how to safely start reopening amid
  the pandemic. While online sales have kept the business afloat since
  Canadian lockdowns began in March, many local customers prefer to pick
  up their orders from the store, explains Birkemoe.

  “With a small bookstore, you can have a real connection with your
  customer, and we're trying to keep that alive, because people are
  craving that experience, as are we,” he says.
  The Beguiling, a comic-book shop in Toronto, takes a creative approach
  to kerbside pickup with a Peanuts-inspired 'help' booth (Credit: Peter
  Birkemoe)

  The Beguiling, a comic-book shop in Toronto, takes a creative approach
  to kerbside pickup with a Peanuts-inspired 'help' booth (Credit: Peter
  Birkemoe)

  During the Covid-19 pandemic, consumers across many parts of the globe
  have turned to kerbside pick-up (also known as click-and-collect) as a
  matter of safety and necessity, collecting purchases from Walmart,
  Tesco, the mall or their [26]local High Street shops without ever
  leaving their cars. While the service has been especially useful during
  the crisis, it has also introduced millions of shoppers to a convenient
  channel that they may be unwilling to give up even as restrictions
  ease.

  “The question is, ‘Will it stick?’” says Matt Katz, managing partner at
  global consultancy SSA & Company. “And I’d say it will stick. It's hard
  to put the genie back in the bottle… and it is a terrific customer
  service offer.”

  Routine shopping, made easier

  At supermarkets, kerbside service offers customers the choice to skip
  crowds and long queues, enabling them to keep kids buckled in the
  backseat and get a hand with loading groceries into the boot. At malls,
  it gives people a convenient central pick-up point for the plethora of
  stores inside (or, for [27]some São [28]Paulo[29] residents, the
  opportunity to drive through the shopping centre itself).

It's hard to put the genie back in the bottle… and it is a terrific customer
service offer – Matt Katz

  According to [30]Adobe Analytics, US click-and-collect orders – both
  kerbside and in-store pick-up – surged 208% between 1 April and 20
  April, compared to a year ago. Although this pace of growth has since
  slowed as shops have begun to reopen, adoption remains high, indicating
  that many people who tried these services while shops were closed are
  likely to continue to use them after they reopen. Adobe researchers
  also found that [31]23% of online shoppers prefer some form of
  click-and-collect over having orders delivered to their homes.

  Kerbside pick-up bridges the gap between ecommerce and physical retail,
  offering consumers the immediacy and familiarity of driving to the
  shops for their purchases alongside the relative ease and safety of
  ordering online. For everyday shopping, this kind of service is a
  natural fit: customers can order a 12kg bag of dog food, a pack of AAA
  batteries and a few frozen pizzas from their big-box store of choice
  and, in a few hours, drive to a designated parking space where it will
  be delivered to their car at no extra fee.

  Minneapolis-based Target began testing the current iteration of its
  Drive Up service in 2017. But, in recent months, it has exploded in
  popularity, with sales up 1,000% in April over the previous year,
  according to a company earnings call. (A previous version of the
  service, implemented in partnership with San Francisco start-up
  Curbside, was eliminated in 2016 after two years of testing, reportedly
  because the company decided to develop the current programme in-house.)

  For Target, at least, customers who try Drive Up tend to become more
  loyal shoppers, spending more in-store and overall than they did before
  using the service.
  Kerbside pickup orders have grown exponentially during Covid-19, with
  growth stretching across both major retailers and local shops (Credit:
  Alamy)

  Kerbside pickup orders have grown exponentially during Covid-19, with
  growth stretching across both major retailers and local shops (Credit:
  Alamy)

  “Consumers enjoy their flexibility, and they enjoy being able to define
  how they're serviced and how they receive goods,” says Greg Portell,
  lead partner in the global consumer practice of Kearney, a strategy and
  management consulting firm. “In some cases that's going to be shipped
  to my home. In some cases it's going to be, ‘I wanted to go explore in
  the store’. And in other cases it's going to be, ‘I just need to fly by
  and pick it up’. … It creates another reason for a consumer to prefer
  one retailer over the other.”

  A question of convenience

  Currently, kerbside service is still relatively nascent in most parts
  of the world and, in the long term, most experts predict it will become
  just part of a suite of options that consumers will expect from
  retailers.

35% of shoppers who pick up an online order in a shop versus kerbside will
buy something else as well

  For consumers who have access to a car and don’t want to pay for
  shipping charges and put up with potential courier delays, it can save
  both time and money. “Now that I have more time on my hands, it's just
  as easy for me to pre-order certain things and wait a period of time
  and have them deliver it, but I might as well get in my car and have it
  brought to me,” says Meghan Stabler, VP of product marketing and
  communications at BigCommerce, an online retail platform. “I'm not
  paying extra for the service, but they're bringing it out and putting
  into my car… It's all about convenience in this world and I think it's
  going to last post-Covid as well.”

  Retailers may, however, need to adapt to long-term trends such as
  [32]the decline in car ownership and the rise of ride-sharing,
  potentially offering kerbside service for those on bicycle or foot,
  much like The Beguiling’s walk-up counter. Some are already doing this,
  combining kerbside with home delivery through partnerships with
  ride-hailing giants including Singapore-based Grab, which has
  [33]expanded its delivery services to convenience stores and
  supermarkets across 50 cities in Southeast Asia in recent months.

  Most retailers that offer kerbside pick-up today limit the range of
  inventory they offer through the channel, says Portell, stocking only
  the most popular products in order to ensure the most efficient
  customer experience possible. Allowing a customer to pre-order an item
  only to later notify them it’s out of stock is a sure way to lose their
  business, says Stabler – a phenomenon demonstrated by the flood of
  [34]frustrated customer-service messages directed at grocers and other
  retailers in the early stages of the pandemic.
  Click-and-collect shopping bridges the gap between ecommerce and
  physical retail, enabling shoppers to go to their favourite stores with
  more convenience (Credit: Alamy)

  Click-and-collect shopping bridges the gap between ecommerce and
  physical retail, enabling shoppers to go to their favourite stores with
  more convenience (Credit: Alamy)

  What the system gains in efficiency, it sacrifices in spontaneity,
  however: according to Forrester research [35]as reported by CNBC, 35%
  of shoppers who pick up an online order in a shop versus kerbside will
  buy something else as well, suggesting that the latter may be a better
  fit for consumers who don’t want to be tempted by other merchandise.

  Still a place for the in-store experience

  As non-essential shops reopen, consumers have an increasingly wide
  array of choices in terms of how they interact with retailers, and
  they’re unlikely to want to give any of these options up if they’ve had
  a good experience, says Portell. (Though they may have to make an
  exception for driving through the mall.)

  “I think what consumers will do is they'll figure out their basket of
  goods: what they need for sustenance, what they need for activity, what
  they want for pleasure, and they'll figure out the best way to acquire
  those products,” says Katz.

  Consumers are more likely to go in-person to clothing boutiques,
  department stores and other shops that usually rely on [36]leisurely
  browsing, try-ons and other high-touch behaviours, says Portell.

  For the subset of shoppers who prefer pick-up or feel unsafe going into
  shops, however, these retailers will need to find innovative methods of
  bringing the in-store experience to customers where they are, says Lara
  Marrero, principal and retail practice leader at Gensler, an
  international architecture firm. Some of the world’s top shopping
  centres are creating branded pop-up pick-up areas, she says, while
  concepts like [37]Nordstrom Local – the Seattle-based department
  store’s inventory-free online pick-up and service hubs – could provide
  a model for what [38]click-and-collect shopping may look like in the
  future.
  People like the click-and-collect experiences they've had amid the
  pandemic, and "it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle", says
  consultant Matt Katz (Credit: Alamy)

  People like the click-and-collect experiences they've had amid the
  pandemic, and "it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle", says
  consultant Matt Katz (Credit: Alamy)

  “What's to say that we can't do that same thing at the kerbside? To
  have the pop-up fitting room or to have that unit that you can actually
  build out, keep it safe, keep it in open-air, and make it a different
  experience that you don't even have to go into the store for,” she
  says. “We're in the middle of the pendulum swing… we haven't even seen
  where it's going to land, but retailers that come out with these new
  ideas are going to be setting the new pace for what the future of
  retail is.”

  As for The Beguiling’s shoppers, the new set-up reintroduces an element
  of serendipity and human interaction that many people treasure about
  local retailers, especially ones that sell out-of-print books, rare
  collectibles and other items that can’t be easily found online. As long
  as there is any kind of health concern associated with indoor shopping,
  Birkemoe expects many of his customers will continue to shop kerbside.

  “If you don't need to go to a store, why are you going into a store? If
  you are just picking up a thing and you know what it is, you should be
  exercising it.”
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