So yes there’s this whole coronavirus thing. But even before that some of the major players, including Walmart, have been heavily promoting their curbside pickup.
I’m assuming they actually make more money that way, but it wouldn’t seem so considering someone has to pick your order and load it into your trunk for you. Can I assume it’s being able to get you to buy more with showing you stuff on their app? Not having to pay someone to clean up after you in the store? That their pickers can work a lot faster than you can shop? You not being in the store giving their employees coronavirus or even just a cold or flu?
Or is it something that isn’t actually better for them than you shopping in person but they’re doing it to poach customers from competitors?
It’s not a matter of each curbside transaction being more profitable. EVERY transaction is profitable. Curbside pickup lures in people in a hurry who might otherwise shop less often due to time factors. If you can get those people coming to Walmart and coming in more often, mission accomplished.
More curb side pickup than going into the store means devoting staff to serving customers with no contact, and less time and money spent keeping the inside of the store clean.
Curbside/contactless pickup reduces exposure to the virus. Offering it might encourage sales that potential customers might avoid completely if they had to go inside. It’s also cheaper for everyone than delivery.
I think all of the OP’s guesses are quite plausible, even for the pre-COVID era. I would even paraphrase the OP’s last line as: “Businesses will do everything in their power to get one more sale.”
Plus, some businesses (my local supermarket, for example) charge a service fee for curbside pickup. That alone might justify the entire enterprise.
(I often find that I can answer my kids’ questions about business with one single word: “Marketing”. It needs a bit of explanation, of course, but it often comes down to just that one idea)
It is a halfway measure between having to go in the store and having to wait a few days for an Amazon delivery.
“I want my shit now, but I’m too busy all the time to get dressed and then get out of my car. Busy busy busy, that’s me. Getting texts, sending texts, I don’t got no time to do no shopping in no store.”
My father has started going into the grocery store, only during senior hour, with mask and gloves. If the store moved something and he can’t find it, he’s ordering it on Amazon, not with the store. He has AmazonPrime and he’s in the greater Seattle area. He doesn’t have to wait long.
Earlier my parents only did curbside pickup, but they didn’t always get exactly what they wanted, due to shortages, etc. If my father’s in the store, and the store doesn’t have Beer AB, he knows what he’ll accept as substitute, but the stores don’t always have the same options for ordering.
If it wasn’t for curbside pickup, they would have ordered a lot more products from Amazon. With curbside pickup they can still frequent their local stores and keep the local people working.
Even before COVID, this is the primary answer. Stores that were pushing curbside pick-up weren’t competing against in-store shopping; they were competing against Amazon, and other home delivery services.
Before coronavirus, I didn’t see curbside pick-up. I saw in-store pick-up, which was a little different. It probably had other advantages for stores, but I suspect the main one was gaining customers who didn’t want to travel to the store and perhaps be unable to find what they needed.
As an example of curbside pickup competing against Amazon, on Black Friday last year, Best Buy had something I wanted (5GB WD My Passport external HDD for I think $90) for a good price, I think 30% less than Amazon and less than Amazon even today. I didn’t want to have to fight for parking so I ordered two of them online for curbside pickup, drove there and waited in the set-aside parking spots. Someone brought out the items to me and I got out of there in under ten minutes. Of course by not going in the store, I didn’t buy stuff not discounted, so I doubt the store made any money on me.
I don’t know if my supermarket offered it before the virus, but I have been using it since April. At first it was free, then maybe a month ago they started charging $3 for the service. That and the $5 tip are worth it not to have to go inside. The only problem I can see is that a product they normally have and I use a lot of does not appear on their list. It is their house brand of dark chocolate and I cannot order it from Amazon. I’d love to go in just to look at the shelf it is always on and see if it is really empty.
Trader Joe’s needs to start offering curbside pickup. They have a couple of things that I used to buy every week, but I haven’t been since they started metering people coming into the store. I’m simply not going to wait in line 20 minutes just to get in the door.
I’ve waited in the line to get into Trader Joe’s. It’s not that bad. Usually they let in ten people at at time, so even if the line looks long, it moves quickly. And at the right time of day, the line is very short. And on the bright side, metering people entering the store means it’s less crowded. It’s also easier to find parking.
Still a win for the store. Even if the margin is slim to none, they still prevented Amazon from making a sale, and if the experience worked well for you, it’s likely you will do it again.
We actually used the Walmart curbside pickup quite a bit prior to the onset of the pandemic, and have just expanded its use since.
Why? Easy. Because sometimes it’s a LOT easier to be able to sit down at 9:30 at night with your phone and add stuff to your order, or do it during a work break, or while you’re on the throne, or whatever. And then when it’s time to pick it up, you go park and someone brings it out and loads it into your car. No worries about finding a parking space, waiting in a long checkout line, etc… you can just chill in your car with the A/C or heat on, with the radio going. In a lot of ways it’s MUCH more convenient.
Admittedly, prior to the pandemic, we mostly used it for packaged type stuff- toiletries, cereal, canned goods, flour, certain pre-packaged meats (sausage, for example), and the like. We didn’t really get a lot of the sort of thing that most people want to eyeball before they buy it. But since the pandemic has started, we’ve got that stuff that way too, with surprisingly good results.
And for retailers, it gives them a chance to have a bit more control over how their inventory moves- they can (and do) give the meat that’s got sooner expiration dates to the curbside people. Nothing has been expired, but sometimes you have like 2-3 days until the expiration date.
I think this is a big factor. Stores have always put a lot of effort into getting customers to walk into the store. Once a customer’s inside, they can start working on upselling them. That’s going to be much more difficult with curbside sales.
Which leads to my next point; we shouldn’t automatically assume that businesses are brilliant. Sometimes they have bad ideas. It’s possible that within a few years, stores will realize they’re losing money on curbside pickup sales and they’ll disappear.
And even without the coronavirus, I can see the appeal of curbside pickup to parents, particularly of young children. Much easier to keep them in the car than to manage them as you shop in a big-box store.