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Click and Collect catches on amongst UK consumers

Monday, February 17, 2014 - 09:32 by Graham Miller

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While Christmas is already a distant memory for most people, facts and figures about the way consumers shopped during this period are still emerging.

The latest report from Econsultancy, has revealed that 45 per cent of people who placed orders via safe shopping online choose to collect their products the same day at a local store, rather than wait for them to be delivered.

Brits are more in favour of click & collect services than those in the US, where just a fifth of people reserve items for in-store pickup.

The level of click & collect activity varies between retailers, with Halfords reporting that 86 per cent of people who purchased items online subsequently chose to visit one of its bricks and mortar outlets to get the products in question.

The year on year growth for click & collect usage in the UK is at five per cent, which may represent a relatively steady increase rather than a rapid rise, but also points to just how mature the e-commerce market has become in the past decade.

Analysts argue that if retailers do not take account of the trend for consumers seeking out the quickest and easiest way to get access to products they order online, they could be losing out on sales.

In fact, almost a third of the Brits surveyed said that they had not used certain e-commerce sites during the Christmas period because of the lack of delivery options.

Click & collect is an especially beneficial solution for high street retailers, because of course it means that people are still willing to visit real world outlets, even if they have first engaged with the company on the web, helping to justify bricks and mortar chains being sustained.