Italy is the country with the least number of concierges in Europe, as revealed by data from the Netcomm Consortium and as we have recounted in illustrating the growth Out of Home deliveries in recent years.
Only 15 percent of Italian online shoppers, in fact, have a concierge service that is essential to ensure delivery even when the final recipient is not at home. For this reason, eShoppers now demand more flexible delivery modes or the possibility of being able to take advantage of customized services such as delivery by appointment or during evening and holiday hours.
Responses to the new needs of eShoppers
An efficient and more sustainable response – both economically and environmentally – to this need are so-called Out Of Home deliveries at Lockers and Pickup Points, or directly to a Merchant’s store in Click & Collect mode. As of today, in fact, as illustrated by the report NetRetail 2023. Digital Purchases of Italians by NetComm, the number of signs offering the possibility of in-store pickup of products purchased online is growing, although the share still appears to be small. Meanwhile, there is a flourishing of numerous delivery initiatives to third-party locations (non-proprietary outlets, bars, newsstands, post offices etc..) and at automated micro-hubs.
We then analyze data and advantages of such online order pickup mode.
Home delivery alternatives: the numbers
According to NetComm data, in Italy deliveries to the point of sale of the Merchant at which the online purchase was made are about 2 million every month. At the same time, in the last ten years, deliveries of an online purchase to a third-party address that is not a Merchant’s store have grown more than tenfold, and deliveries to automated micro-hubs have reached 15.9 percent of total online product purchases.
It should also be remembered that, as Roberto Liscia, president of the Netcomm Consortium, pointed out at Netcomm Forum 2023, eCommerce does not represent a competitor to more traditional forms of purchasing; on the contrary, digital purchases and purchases at physical stores support and help each other, giving rise to increasingly hybrid and omnichannel purchasing models. Integration between digital and physical will therefore be an increasingly important goal for Merchants to pursue. At the same time, logistics will assume an increasingly important role within the consumer journey. Indeed, the presence of increasingly efficient and alternative delivery and pickup services have convinced many non-buyers or sporadic buyers to increase the frequency of online shopping, thus further boosting the growth of multichannel eCommerce.
This is why investing in delivery and pickup services is something Merchants can no longer ignore. But how to satisfy eShoppers with alternative, more flexible and more sustainable ways than traditional Home Delivery? True to what was described just above, that physical and digital stores can collaborate and support each other, the answer could come from physical stores themselves.
In-store pickup of online orders: the Click & Collect
According to NetRetail research, to date, eCommerce service offerings weighted by the stores analyzed indicate that 92.3 percent of Italian stores belong to a brand that also sells online. In almost all of the stores of the insignias, therefore, one could pick up a product purchased online.
The benefits of Click & Collect
The benefits of Click & Collect are obvious: in fact, it guarantees not only an additional service for all those who need it (for example, those who do not have a concierge service and who, working outside the home, need to pick up their order outside the home or at particular times), but also a richer profiling of customers, the analysis of their multichannel purchasing paths and, above all, a greater number of steps in the stores with the possible possibility of adding more products than ordered online.
As highlighted in one of our recent interviews by Andrea Liso, CEO m-dis Distribuzione Media Spa also owner of the PrimaEdicola brand, a network already integrated into GEL Proximity and available to carriers, marketplaces and online stores, “24% of those who access newsstands to pick up a package enter them for the first time, 30% stay beyond the time needed for simple pickup and, of these, 90% make a purchase for at least €5.”
How many online stores in Italy offer Click & Collect
Yet, this option that represents the first step toward channel integration is often ignored.
In fact, only a little more than half – 55 percent – of the insignias, or 45 percent of the stores, make it possible to collect a product purchased online in store, despite the fact that the share of retailers active in eCommerce is increasing sharply and has risen from 64.7 percent in March 2016 to the current 89.9 percent.
The same holds true, of course, for returns: only 26.3 percent of the stores of the surveyed chains allow in-store returns of a product purchased online.
Data that are surprising in light of the fact that as reported by Istat, in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, this mode of purchase had grown by as much as 349%. A service then that many consumers have already experienced and are now returning to demand.
Book online, pick up in store: the numbers of Book & Collect
In addition, an even smaller proportion of stores offer customers the so-called Book & Collect service, i.e., the ability to pick up at a store a product previously only booked online (whose payment, therefore, has not yet been completed).
“This operation,” reads the NeRetail report, “presents an even greater level of sophistication than simple in-store pickup because it presupposes a single information system to manage the two channels, aligned in real time with the availability of products in stock and in the stores of the traditional network. In fact, this possibility is offered in only 17.6 percent of the stores of the analyzed signs and can be considered at the moment the most advanced stage in the work of channel integration.”
However, the incidence of this indicator, as of all those analyzed, rose between pre- and post-pandemic from 13.9 percent in March 2020 to 27.5 percent in April 2023. Looking at this service, it should also be noted that the differences between categories are still very pronounced. In three categories – Media & Publishing, Health, and Cosmetics & Perfumery – Book & Collect is an option offered to customers in more than one in two stores, while in other categories – such as GDO – it is almost completely nonexistent.
It is clear, then, that integrating different ways of purchasing, delivery and order pickup to one’s eCommerce is as bad as it gets in order to satisfy one’s customers and, in case one also has one or more physical stores, help retail sales.
But how to optimize your services and build a Proximity Network?
The answer comes from GEL Proximity: thanks to our technology it is in fact possible to upload and enable a physical network of stores on our map, thus merging Click & Collect pick-up services in proprietary stores with those of the Points of Proximity managed by third parties, allowing customers to purchase a wide range of products online while maintaining control over in-store delivery processes in the case of C&C and also saving on shipping costs.
You can then create a customized logistical UX on your check-out by merging your store network with the more than 125,000 Pickup Points and Lockers already active nationwide and internationally in the GEL Proximity network.
Find out more, or contact us for more information.
