©stellalevi via Canva.com
Consumers are becoming increasingly frustrated not being able to find a product in store when it’s widely available online, according to AlixPartners’ 2024 Consumer Sentiment Index.
AlixPartners wrote in the study, “‘Right product, right place, right time’ echoes in every retail conference room, yet as retailers have expanded online assortments and marketplaces to attract new customers and traffic, it’s become more challenging to avoid frustrating shoppers when they can’t find their size or their desired item in-store.”
Across retailers, AlixPartners finds that in-store assortments are, on average, only about 9% as large as the online assortment. Among different sectors, mass retailers only offer 2% of their online SKU in store; department stores, 7%; jewelry, 12%; active, 16%; footwear, 19%, and specialty, 32%.
As an example of the challenges, AlixPartners said Macys.com has 24,000 women’s tops available online, but inside Macy’s largest store, the Herald Square flagship in New York City, only 2,500 women’s tops are available for customers to pick up. For Gap.com, 158 women’s tops and tees are available online, but only 50 are offered for pick-up in its Herald Square location.
AlixPartners wrote, “While retailers cannot afford [to] take on the inventory cost and risk of carrying this breadth of product in store, the bar is high to appear seamless. To do so, retailers must improve their ability to integrate advanced analytics and logistics to boost their efforts to both forecast and move products more effectively … and stop disappointing customers.”
When asked what they do when they find a product is not in stock in store, 36% of consumers order it online from the same retailer, 34% order it online from a different retailer, and 31% try to find it in-store from a different retailer.
While important across all sectors, finding an online product in-store is most important in higher-priced sectors, such as luxury, as well as jewelry, watches, and outdoor.
Looking at generations, having in-stock products in stores is most important to millennials and Gen X. A 2020 survey from Zebra Technologies found similar results, seeing 75% of millennials and 53% of Gen X report leaving a store without a purchase and buying online due to out-of-stocks, while only 26% of boomers do so.
Tablets or POS terminals promise to provide a way for in-store staff to order a product online to make up for an in-store out-of-stock. However, Zebra's 2023 Global Shopper Study found that 80% of associates believe maintaining real-time visibility of out-of-stocks is a significant challenge, 77% believe shoppers are better connected to information than associates, and 61% have little time to help customers because they are doing other lower value tasks.
Providing in-store pickup to ensure items are available when a shopper arrives at the store can also help avoid out-of-stocks.
Additionally, online information about in-store inventory levels can help consumers avoid the disappointment of an in-store out-of-stock. Some stores, including Macy’s, show alternative in-store options online for products unavailable at the store level.