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Delivery research round-up: from how Australians shop on UK websites, to click and collect forecasts

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Royal Mail has introduced tracked returns to Australia in response to consumer demand

Research carried out for Royal Mail by Trinity McQueen questioned 1,500 Australian online shoppers and found that 30% of online shoppers in Australia had bought from a UK website, spending an average of £39 a month ($70) in doing so, out of an average £73 ($132) monthly online spend.  

More than three quarters of those questioned (76%) opt to buy from UK sites for improved availability, while 46% buy products that are only on sale in the UK, and 59% want to buy a British brand. Moreover, 60% of Australian shoppers find that it’s cheaper for them to buy items from UK websites than locally – and that’s a deciding factor for 41% of those questioned.

Eighty per cent of Australian shoppers trusted items bought from UK sites would be genuine brands. Some 81% buy from marketplaces – compared to 68% in the UK. The leading marketplace was eBay, followed by Gumtree and then Amazon. 

Just over 12% of Australian online shoppers had returned an item they bought from a UK site. Almost three quarters (73%) of shoppers said they would track every item if the service was available, and 74% said they would be unlikely to return to buy from a retailer is the returns experience was difficult. 

Find out more about the Royal Mail’s Australia research. 

Measuring the growth of click and collect

Click and collect is set to grow by 45.8% in the next five years, new research suggests. 

By 2023, the market for deliveries that are ordered online and picked-up in-store will reach £9.8bn, according to GlobalData. 

It says that the clothing and footwear sector – which accounted for 59.9% of spending in 2018 – will continue to be the largest for the channel. And, it argues in a new report, Click and Collect in the UK, 2018-2023, it suggests that most multichannel retailers have fine tuned their click and collect service in recent years by extending order cut-off times, increasing speed and minimising the costs. The study questioned 10,000 online shoppers in 2018. 

GlobalData retail analyst Emily Salter said: “Although 79.9% of click & collect users were satisfied with click and collect services in 2018, this is significantly lower than for home delivery, which stands at 89.5%.

“Retailers continue to introduce measures to meet rising consumer expectations for home delivery, such as offering same day services – led by online pureplays such as Amazon and ASOS. Next is one of the few multichannel retailers currently offering a click and collect proposition to rival the speed and cost of home delivery, through recently introducing free one hour collection in selected stores.”

The GlobalData study suggests that 39.2% of click and collect users bought something else while collecting their last order. The most likely top-up categories are in food and grocery. 

“A number of factors will inhibit growth of the click & collect channel, including store closures. The growing number of retailers closing stores and implementing CVAs will reduce the availability of collection points, increasing usage of alternative delivery options. Additionally, delivery saver schemes encourage customers to predominantly use home delivery as express deliveries are included in the vast majority of schemes, driving up usage of express home delivery.”

The study chimes with recently-released IRUK Top500 2019 research, which found that, while the number of IRUK Top500 retailers offering click and collect as a service has steadily increased, many have reduced the speed of their service. In 2019, 60% of Top500 retailers offered the service – but only 23% offered next-day collection, while 11% offered same-day collection.

Among those retailers included both in the IRUK Top500 2018 and 2019, 43% offered next-day collection last year, and 29% this year.  In 2018, 21% of that group offered same-day collection, falling to 14% in 2019.

Image: Fotolia 

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