The “click and collect” grocery model in the UK

An article in the Financial Times (April 21, 2014) titled “WalMart’s English Experiment”, describes “click and collect”, an approach where WalMart owned Asda’s customers in the UK order their grocery online, it is delivered to temperature controlled lockers close to their homes and is picked up by customers assisted by Asda employees. The goal is to have retailers do the picking and delivery to lockers, providing delivery close to customers, not requiring coordination with customers to be in their homes for delivery, but saving last mile costs. Will this balanced sharing of work with customers save costs while providing convenience ? Will impulse buys be decreased if the customer does not walk around the store to shop ? Will the need to have multiple lockers across locations make this approach inferior to pickup from local shops (gas stations, convenience stores and newstands), a model favored by Amazon ?

2 Responses to The “click and collect” grocery model in the UK

Kyle Harshbarger (@KyleHarshbarger) says:

April 22, 2014 at 3:39 pm

How do they handle the produce selection problem? A big reason to go shopping yourself is to find high quality produce the first time.

Sameer Mehta (@isameermehta) says:

April 23, 2014 at 10:01 am

One another factor affecting the service level would be to see how flexible are the booked time windows for the customer. Though there might be savings in last mile costs, the inventory holding and maintenance costs and staffing levels at the dedicated collection point can offset those savings. The decentralization by offering multiple lockers across locations might not necessarily be inferior to the traditional centralized pickups from local shops as the variability in demand is reduced by pre-booking the orders.