The final countdown toward Christmas Day is upon us, and last-minute shoppers are still scrambling to pick up gifts for their loved ones before the clock runs out.
And while this may not be news in and of itself, “pick up” is the operative phrase this year. Click-and-collect shopping — also known as buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) — is up 47 percent this holiday season over last year, according to new data from Adobe. Customers hoping to save time are taking advantage of the investments that retailers like Target, Macy’s, Kohl’s and Walmart have made in enabling employees to fulfill same-day online orders so they’re ready for in-store or even curbside pickup.
With the exception of Amazon’s two-hour delivery for Prime Now orders in certain cities, almost all online-shopping deadlines have passed, and yet e-commerce is still playing an important role in retailers’ holiday offerings. On Christmas Eve, Salesforce forecasts that mobile will dominate for last-minute shopping, accounting for 72 percent of visits and 54 percent of orders on Dec. 24 (compared with 68 percent of traffic and 46 percent of orders for the season as a whole).
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Today, Kohl’s is advertising free same-day store pickup for orders placed before 3 p.m. local time, and the retailer has touted its pickup lockers and enhanced digital capabilities for getting shoppers into stores. This month, Old Navy announced a partnership with Lyft in which the retailer would shuttle shoppers free of charge to stores via the ridesharing app, and while that promo expired on Super Saturday, Old Navy is still trumpeting its BOPIS offerings on its homepage. Target, meanwhile, told CNBC that about 80 percent of online orders are fulfilled from stores in the days leading up to Christmas, compared with around 50 percent the rest of the year, and around 30 percent of customers that come to stores to pick up these orders end up doing more shopping when they get there.
