Growing retail logistics options for customers causing confusion ?

An article in the Wall Street Journal (November 18,2018) titled “Black Friday Shoppers Beware:Online Shopping Gets More Complicated” describes the many options for shopping and pickup at retail stores. At Target there are 6 options from store purchase, to curbside pickup or DriveUp, to free in-store pickup or Order Pickup, to Delivery From Store to the customer’s home for a $7 fee, to delivery same-day all year around for a $99 annual fee. These same features have different names at WalMart and Macy’s. Within the store, customers can use regular checkout or checkout using their phones. Customers are expected to use different modes depending on the task, perhaps using OrderUp around Thanksgiving and Driveup around Christmas. Will these varying options create customer confusion and decrease sales ? Should customers be provided a guarantee that the net prices will not change substantially across these different modes or should they be asked to value their time appropriately when choosing across these options ? Should stores create a choice survey to enable customers to pick the best option that suits their goals ?

About aviyer2010

Professor
This entry was posted in consumer, Cost, delivery, Ecommerce, logistics, retailers, Service Operations and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

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