Amazon mull UK Merchant Shop Click & Collect

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We recently wrote that Amazon are surveying merchants as they consider the possibility of click & collect services from physical shops in France. They are now carrying out a similar UK Merchant Shop Click & Collect survey.

This is a really interesting development for retailers and brands who have physical stores as it will be the first time that selling on Amazon would give the capability to attract consumers into their stores to collect Amazon purchases. It’s unclear at the moment if it would be limited to collecting products sold by the retailer who is offering Amazon France click & Collect, or if it could include all products sold on Amazon France.

UK Merchant Shop Click & Collect

The questions Amazon will ask in the survey are:

Do you have a physical store where you sell your products (Store, shopping centre, drugstore, point of sale)?
How many stores do you own?
Do you offer your customers the possibility to purchase online and pick up the product in your store?
Are you able to ship the products from your store with a national scope?
Do you have enough employees to manage online orders that customers pick up in your store?
Are you able to manage orders during the weekend?
How do you handle your stock in Seller Central?
What is the delay to prepare an order for a customer that purchase online?

It looks very much as if Amazon are not only looking at UK Merchant Shop Click & Collect from store, but are also wanting to leverage the stock in physical stores and get it sold on Amazon with ship from store. Naturally for brands and retailers this will mean having robust integrated stock management that combines online stock with store stock and having the facility to ship from store when an order is placed on Amazon – preferably within a couple of hours and over the weekends too!

For smaller merchants who may only have a single store location, this will be considerably easier if you already have your online operations in the same premises as your physical store, but you will need to ensure that if a product is sold in store and it’s the last one that the stock is removed for sale from Amazon.

Tamebay.com