Discover how healthcare retailer
increased in-store footfalls
leveraging 'BOPIS' an omnichannel strategy

What is BOPIS omnichannel?

BOPIS stands for buy-online pickup-in-store and is an omnichannel retail strategy aiming to deliver convenient ordering through online medium and in-store delivery.

As the name suggests, BOPIS is a relatively simple retail strategy that allows customers to make purchases online and then pick them up in a physical store. Store owners need to maintain an active eCommerce store for managing the inventory and notifications to leverage the BOPIS process.

On the other hand, customers can get a positive shopping experience as long as they are certain they will get the item delivered to their desired location. As long as one can take care of some crucial factors, businesses and customers can benefit from implementing BOPIS in retail.

Why do customers choose BOPIS?

Efficient order fulfilment, elimination of high shipping costs, convenient returns, and availability of stocks are some of the key reasons customers choose BOPIS in retail strategy.

Online shoppers demand convenience and flexibility, which attracts them the most to BOPIS orders. This does not come as a surprise that most online businesses often face challenges that cause many customer inconveniences.

Things like high shipping costs, complex return processes, and shortage of available stock are not something customers want to deal with. This clearly justifies the BOPIS strategy's popularity among customers and reality. But besides these, there are some key reasons why customers choose BOPIS over the conventional approach. These reasons include the following:

• Efficient Order Fulfilment: This is one of the primary factors fuelling BOPIS's popularity as an omnichannel marketing strategy in this digitized business environment. No eCommerce customers appreciate or even care for efficient delivery in this modern age. Besides that, delayed gratification also negatively impacts the overall customer experience that eCommerce businesses have to deliver.
  Numbers suggest most customers are now opting for same-day delivery, which indicates a lack of patience, especially among young customers. But since same-day delivery is very resource intensive, it is not always possible for retailers. In such cases, BOPIS comes as an excellent alternative that benefits both customers and retailers. Nonetheless, customers will continue to choose BOPIS as long as they can get efficient delivery with minimal hassle.

• Elimination of High Shipping Costs: High shipping cost is a major turndown for almost every customer. In the present market situation, customers often have to pay higher shipping costs to avail of convenient delivery. Many businesses are choosing to cope with this through the free shopping strategy. But there is no secret that not every retail eCommerce business can sustain its operations with free shipping strategies.
  Hence most of these businesses are transferring this shipping cost to customers while keeping their profit intact. But BOPIS marketing offers customers an excellent alternative to save themselves from high shipping costs. Besides that, they also enjoy convenient delivery with shipping options that best suits their convenience and pockets.

• Convenient Returns: Shopping via eCommerce stores means buying a product without examining it physically. Hence, it does not come as a surprise that the product often fails to match customers' expectations. But eCommerce stores do provide customers with an option to return the products. However, that does not solve the problem in many ways, especially because returns are often complex and highly inefficient.
  But this is where BOPIS again comes in as a saviour, as it allows customers to examine the product at the store before taking it home. This is also great for businesses as it allows them to bring down return rates significantly. As a result, BOPIS also becomes an effective way to facilitate an increase in sales.

• Availability of Stocks: There is no shortage of instances where customers are looking for a product only to find it is out of stock. Consequently, this has a severely adverse impact on the overall customer experience. Besides that, it also undermines the retailers' confidence in ensuring timely delivery. This became even more prevalent during the Covid pandemic with severe constraints on the supply chain.
  But BOPIS retail trends show that this strategy has served as a highly effective insurance policy in this case. Leveraging the potential of this strategy assures customers of their delivery. This is always a beneficial thing for a business as it helps them build better goodwill.