Whether retailers like it or not, shoppers are raising the stakes of the game by demanding the ability to shop online when they want ease, in the store when they want immediate gratification and, increasingly, a combination of the two.
During the most recent holiday season, nearly one-third of shoppers opted to purchase their products online and then pick them up at the store, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers’ Holiday Consumer Purchasing Trends Study.

Employees assist shoppers at the check out counter of a Walmart store in Los Angeles.

From a consumer point of view, what retailers call “click and collect,” “buy online, pick up in store,” or BOPUS, makes complete sense. It takes the advantages of online shopping and marries them to the advantages of traditional stores, namely the ability to get a product quick and to see and touch it.
For brick-and-mortar retailers searching for strategies to ease the pain from Amazon eating their lunch as more consumers shop online, the strategy makes a lot of sense even though its implementation isn’t always easy. Stores can be leveraged as distribution centers where consumers take over the cost of getting the items from the store to their homes.
Plus in many cases, shoppers make impulse purchases when they come into the store to retrieve their items, driving sales higher.
According to the ICSC, 69 percent of shoppers who used click and collect this holiday season purchased additional items while picking up in store. Its survey, which polled 1,014 consumers from Dec. 28 to Dec. 30, also found 36 percent of shoppers using those types of services made another purchase in an adjacent store at the time of pick up.

But it’s not foolproof either. When executed poorly, it can impact customer loyalty.
A significant pain point continues to be inventory information. Too often, online ordering tells shoppers inventory is available, when it turns out not to be the case.
Retailers are investing to improve their inventory data systems. This can cost a midsize specialty retailer with a sales range of $2 billion to $4 billion anywhere from $10 million to $20 million, said Steve Osburn, a supply chain strategist at global consultancy Kurt Salmon.
But even the best technology can’t help when shoppers move an item from its expected location while browsing in a store, rendering the last item in stock a challenge to find.
Offering a click-and-collect option also adds new tasks for in-store staff, who have to pick and pack orders for shoppers in addition to their existing duties.
Currently, a small portion of total purchases are completed through click and collect, but it is growing in use, with 49 percent of Americans trying it for the first time last year, according to an exclusive survey conducted for CNBC by consumer market research company InfoScout. The survey polled 1,000 consumers on Jan. 9 and 10 of this year.
According to Slice Intelligence, which scans more than 3 million email receipts, consumers used Wal-Mart’s buy online, pick up in store option the most during the holiday period, followed by Best Buy, Target, Kmart (owned by Sears Holding), and Macy’s.