The impact of convenience in a click and collect retail setting: A consumer-based approach

While click and collect (C&C) is a growing omni-channel grocery shopping model spreading out in Europe and in the US, little attention has been paid to the design of convenience measure in this setting is under researched. In particular the role of the digital feature and its impact on consumer response. We explore the impact of C&C on consumer response through the customer's perception, from his digital to his physical trip. This paper studies customers' behaviors toward their usual retailer and their relationship with them toward the theory of services and more precisely the Service dominant logic (S-D-L). Cconsumers response is analyzed through the prism of convenience, especially by transposing usual measures: access, functional, process, relational to the C&C setting and providing a new one: digital convenience. The conceptual model has been tested empirically on a sample of 1078 consumers and responses are analyzed and decomposed by using Path-PLS structural equation modeling. Our evidence also suggests, that in a whole, each feature of convenience positively influence consumer response with different intensity levels. These findings provide specific recommendations for each C&C system. Thus, functional convenience has the strongest contribution of the model and explains 31.4% of customer response. Further segmented approaches of the causal model prove that fulfillment of C&C has a moderating effect on the relationship between convenience and consumer response. Access convenience remains a prerequisite for C&C in a whole, but somewhat surprisingly our results make evidence that it has a negative impact in a drive-in system. We show that digital convenience is clearly discriminant according the type of C&C.