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Shop Easy. Retail Efficiency | |||||||||||||||||
Here is a concept that would save time, money and risk exposure for select supermarket and retail stores. The concept is for a retail store to allow clients to order their merchandise online using a credit card etc. The retail store employee pulls the order from inventory and hands it to the client when they arrive to pick up the order. Positive Elements for the Business Owner: -Eliminates the need for a retail floor space -Saves labor: No need to stock retail shelves -Less risk exposure for the business owner since they don't have to manage a retail space. Positive Elements for Customers: -An evolving account ordering system. Clients open an account and specify what they want on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis. -No more time consuming shopping for routine items. Set up your account and simply show up once a week to pick up your items.-
TimPletcher, Dec 17 2009
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Sort of like Amazon, except pick-up instead of delivery. Another advantage would be that it would discourage robbers, as there would be no cash at the store. It would also prevent shoplifting. However, it might not actually reduce labor cost for the store. The employees will have to put together the orders for the customers. Normally, the customers do that themselves. So you'll have to pay for labor that is usually provide by the customers for free.
Although this may be a convenience for packaged goods that are standardized a discriminating shopper for fresh fruits and vegetables, meat and fish would probably prefer to pick the goods on site. And anything novel or innovative probably could not be sold without the careful customer seeing what is purchased.
I've been thinking about this idea for a while as well. I believe it will work on some level -there may be enough customers looking for this convenience to make it viable.
It would be ideal for staple items that don't require much thought about but there may be a few special items people would be interested in, especially if quality is consistent.
Although I think it's a good idea, I see this as already happening, in that you can pick up your walmart.com or bestbuy.com orders at the local store already. Your implication that retail stores would go back to the 'general store' model from the 1800s with the people being on the other side of the counter seems to me to be improbable. For a 'brick and morter' store to stop letting customers handle displayed items I think would be a bad sales strategy. From your description, I'm assuming that you mean for current stores to convert to this arrangement.
I've always believed the reason the 'general store' model doesn't work it that it's too time consuming for employees to fill everybody's carts and the incidence of returns would be much higher than when people actually handled the product before selecting it. I also think web purchases are more often kept and 'lived with' even when they weren't as expected because of the difficulty to return things in the mail. The stores wouldn't benefit from this anomaly and would probably have high returns.