More and more companies are now seeing the value of extending their online stores with an offline presence. This is resulting in pure online players partnering with offline players — for example, Amazon.co.uk with Collect+ in the UK or PayPal’s agreement with Discover Financial Services. My colleague Martin Gill has been blogging about this phenomenon in his posts on agile commerce.

We recently looked at consumer attitudes on this topic, and there’s definitely something to be said for online-to-offline expansion. Forrester’s Technographics® data shows that the use of "buy online, pick up in-store" has grown over the past few years. About 43% of US online adults currently use this feature, up from 33% in 2010. In-store pickup is a great way for retailers to create upsell opportunities, as a third of consumers who go to the store to collect their goods state that they buy additional products when in-store. On top of that, US online consumers that regularly use pickup services are more likely to use coupons, and they are the consumers most likely to use their mobile phone or tablet to purchase goods.

 

When thinking about agile commerce, remember that these consumers are your agile consumers — and they offer huge potential. For example, retailers can encourage upselling by sending these consumers mobile coupons when they are in the store picking up their products. And to ensure a seamless cross-channel experience, retailers should make sure that they optimize the in-store pickup process for mobile phones and tablets.