Out-of-stock products are a major issue for all retailers, leading to not only loss of sales, but customer dissatisfaction.
If a customer comes all the way to a retail store, instead of buying online, it’s usually because they want to touch the product before purchase. And if an online shopper is presented with an out-of-stock while browsing a website, it is no wonder that 79% of these customers simply switch brands at the click of a mouse.
According to OneStock, 65% of online and 55% of in-store shopper forget about their purchase completely when they find out their item isn’t available. And 73% of shoppers rank product unavailability as their top frustration.
All of this has a negative repercussion on a retailer’s brand image, but retailers can mitigate this risk by fulfiling online orders from a retailer store.
As crossing channels to grab inventory in order to meet customer demand is becoming the rule, any physical location where a product might be sitting should be considered both as a delivery point and a shipping point.
But the concept requires retailers to think differently about their delivery logistics, not only from DC to store to a customer’s home, but a mix of all end points. For example a customer return could be sent from their home straight to a store which requires the stock, rather than back to the DC.
To learn more about the IT and operational changes which need to be made to encourage this different way of thinking, read OneStock’s whitepaper ‘Winning over stock-outs in fashion retail’.
