Dive Brief:

• Over half (68%) of more than 2,000 U.S. shoppers surveyed by return service Doddle have made multiple buy online, pick up in-store purchases, and 50% of respondents have decided where to shop online based on whether or not they could pick up in-store, according to a Doddle press release emailed to Retail Dive.

• The survey, which was conducted during the week of Dec. 24-29, 2018, also found that 41% of those surveyed said that they used BOPIS services during the holiday season.

• Meanwhile, 85% of shoppers surveyed said they have made additional in-store purchases while visiting stores to pick up what they already had bought online, with 15% saying they engage in that practice "somewhat frequently."

Dive Insight:

Whether one prefers to call it click-and-collect or BOPIS, these offerings are becoming more common among retailers, and shoppers really seem to have warmed up to them in recent months. Even before the holiday shopping season was in full swing, a GPShopper survey found that 67% of consumers planned to use BOPIS offerings for their holiday shopping needs.

That earlier survey suggested more shoppers would turn to click-and-collect during the holidays to make things more convenient for them and help them save time that otherwise would be spent waiting in long checkout lines. Among shoppers who took Doddle's survey, 48% said saving on shipping costs was the primary reason they chose BOPIS, although 39% cited speed as the top reason and 28% said convenience.

This also isn't the first time a survey has noted the trend toward additional purchasing once shoppers visit a store to pick up their click-and-collect purchases. Last summer, an OrderDynamics study found that 37% of customers that had used BOPIS services bought more items that they weren't planning to when they came into stores for pickup. Doddle's new survey findings suggest that particular trend is accelerating sharply.

Some retailers still have more work to do to improve BOPIS capabilities. Nearly half (45%) of shoppers in the Doddle survey said being offered more "deals or savings on future purchases" would get them to use such services more often, followed by "guaranteed same day availability" (37%) and "better information on which items are available to purchase online and pick-up in-store" (21%).

Retailers are jumping aboard the trend en masse, from specialty players like Petco to big-box retailers Walmart and Target, which are both experimenting with new ways to bring convenience to the BOPIS process for shoppers.

Doddle, a U.K. firm that recently started a U.S. expansion, has an interesting position in this emerging trend, as a company that partners with retailers to set up Doddle-branded pickup and return locations inside their stores where shoppers can pick up packages, potentially even items they have ordered from the likes of Amazon. That approach may raise an eyebrow among retailers, but anything that brings shoppers into stores has a potential to increase sales.