Expectations for Local & Same Day Delivery is Growing

While in-store purchases remain the primary shopping channel, it's informative to explore alternative shopping paths and consumer preferences. Not surprising, in RCP's 2024 Consumer Survey, 74% of consumers indicated that the traditional online purchase and ship to home is one of their preferred shopping paths. Clearly supporting unified commerce, nearly half (47%) of customers indicated browsing online/mobile before purchasing in a store and 37% indicated browsing a store before purchasing online/mobile.

When we asked customers to rank shipping and delivery preferences, again buy online, ship to home was #1. Customers indicated #2 as same-day delivery. As e-commerce continues to grow, more and more customers are looking for same-day delivery. While not applicable to all purchases and markets, we see this as a growing trend, especially with younger generations. Gen-Z has the highest utilization of local delivery (47%) and same-day delivery (40%) vs. Baby Boomers local delivery utilization (27%) and same-day delivery (18%).

Interesting when we further dig in on some different generational preferences. #1 with the Silent and Great generation and #2 with Baby Boomers is buy-in-store, ship to home. Millennials and Gen-Z ranked the same as their lowest preference. Overall, we see older generations more focused on frequenting the retail store and younger generations growing in the utilization of digital shopping and delivery.

It is a very interesting time in retail as we continue to see the growing pivot from the traditional in-store purchasing. What will the shape of retail look like in 10 years, let alone 20 - 30 years from now, as the spending power shifts from Baby Boomers to Millennials.

Join us as we continue to discuss our latest Consumer Survey and soon to be released Unified Commerce, Customer Engagement & POS Survey. Use the following link to download our 2024 Consumer Survey Report.

https://www.retailconsultingpartners.com/2024-consumer-survey-download-form