Yahoo Finance Big Lots Partners With Instacart to Offer Same-Day Delivery
In an effort to raise its game in the delivery space, Big Lots, Inc. BIG announced partnership with Instacart, a leading online grocery delivery company. The deal aims at providing same-day delivery service from nearly 1,400 Big Lots’ stores across 47 states in the United States.
Apart from Big Lots’ grocery and pantry staples, customers can shop for home decor, kitchen and dining products as well as personal care items among others using the same-day delivery option. Shoppers can place their orders through the Instacart app or the Big Lots’ page on the Instacart website. Currently, Instacart has access to more than 85% households in the United States through its delivery chain.
As social distancing is an important method to curb the spread of COVID-19, expediting delivery services has become the need of the hour. As customers are reluctant to shop in crowded retail stores because of coronavirus outbreak, companies are looking for numerous ways to ramp up their delivery capabilities. Target Corporation TGT recently announced same-day delivery service for more than 55,000 groceries, essentials, home, electronics, toys and other products in Colorado. Walmart WMT unveiled its Express Delivery service in the wake of the pandemic. The service will help the company deliver items to its customers in less than two hours. Apart from this, Amazon AMZN is known for its efficient delivery services, which is enabling it to deal with the coronavirus-led demand spike.
Meanwhile, Big Lots is leaving no stone unturned to tap the best in the market, as clear from its efforts to leverage marketing strategies, with loyalty databases and e-commerce enhancement. The company is experiencing strong e-commerce growth, buoyed by the success of the Buy Online Pick-up In Store (“BOPIS”) functionality across many stores. Notably, BOPIS has helped the company to increase rate of orders.
In order to tap higher volume, the company is leveraging loyalty database with one-to-one marketing. This led to increased site traffic in number of orders and higher average basket. Big Lots saw the highest e-commerce volume during the first quarter of fiscal 2020 since the launch of this platform in April 2016. Moreover, it has been making significant improvements to online channel with better search, minimized delivery time and enhanced payment options to enhance customer experience. Apparently, its “Lease Online Pickup in Store” (LOPIS) initiative has been receiving strong customer feedback.
Such efforts are likely to continue favoring this Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) company. The stock has rallied 24.7% year to date compared with the industry’s growth of 2%.
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