Every four dollars Americans spend on online purchases reclaimed through curbside pickup or inside stores this year went to Walmart, according to Insider Intelligence.
According to recent estimates by market research firm formerly known as eMarketer, the big box giant brought in 25.4% of all click and collect orders in 2021 – the largest market share compared to any US retailer. That resulted in an estimated $20.4 billion in revenue.
According to the data tracking tool, click and collect sales are expected to grow nearly 20% to $120.15 billion by 2022.
“That’s what people are used to doing now,” said Suzy Davidkhanian, principal analyst for retail and e-commerce at Insider Intelligence. People are starting to accept behavioral change during the pandemic, along with activities like scanning QR codes to read restaurant menus on their phones.
Click and collect – also known as buy online, pick up in store – is now a key sales driver for retailers during the pandemic to provide a safe, fast and limited way to shop. human-to-human interaction. Consumers order groceries, sneakers, light bulbs, etc., online and then purchase their goods in a parking lot or at a designated store counter.
For retailers, the option comes with financial advantages. E-commerce sales are more profitable than traditional sales because they eliminate the cost of delivering packages to people’s doorsteps and it allows store employees to double as pickers order.
However, delivery is still the more dominant e-commerce option in the US. The click and collect funnel is on track to drive about 11 percent of all e-commerce sales for retailers next year, according to the market research firm, according to the market research firm.
For Walmart, click and collect turned the massive store footprint into a weapon against the e-commerce giant Amazon – not just to drive more sales but to improve profitability and drive online sales closer to profit. Walmart has 4,742 stores in the US, excluding the membership-based Sam’s Club store. Amazon’s store footprint is just a small part of that, which mainly includes more than 500 Whole Foods stores.
Walmart, the country’s largest grocery store by revenue, began piloting online grocery sales long before the pandemic hit. It tested the method of shopping at a store in Denver in 2013 and marks 1,000th place with this service in 2017. It now has curbside pickups in more than 3,700 stores.
Walmart’s click-and-collect sales have nearly quadrupled in the past two years, skyrocketing from an estimated $7.21 billion in 2019 to $20.4 billion in 2021. Its market share also increased, from 20.6% in 2019. US e-commerce. The business is yet to generate a profit, despite expanding 79% in the previous financial year, which ended January 31, 2021.
After Walmart, Home Depot is expected to have the second-largest share of clicks and collects by 2021, accounting for about 13.3% of all sales through the channel, according to Insider Intelligence. Target, Best buy and Lowe’s round the top five.
Home Depot rolled out curbside pickups to stores across the country in the spring of 2020 just as the pandemic broke out. Previously, customers could pick up online purchases inside the store from an employee or a pick-up key holder.
For shoppers, buying online, in-store has become a popular way to get time-sensitive home improvement supplies – such as a small piece of hardware, an extra Christmas tree lights or another can of paint – when trying to get a job done – your own project or a professional job, said company spokeswoman Margaret Smith.
The goal has added hundreds of groceries and other items to the pickup curb during the pandemic, including liters of milk, egg cartons and bottles of wine. It credits same-day curbside pickup, Drive Up, for driving digital sales growth during the global health crisis and has reported triple-digit percentage growth belong to sales through Drive Up for several quarters.
Davidkhanian said she expects Walmart to remain the country’s market share leader in clicks and collects. She said the big box retailer is “leaving ahead of everyone” for its early launch – and grocery sales, a form of purchase that relies on shopping methods due to their frequency and immediacy.
She said she expects Target to move up in the rankings — and potentially push Home Depot up from #2 because of its heavy focus on clicks and collects in the past.
