A 2018 consumer study by Metapack broadly mirrored these results. Collecting purchases in-store was less popular in France (55%) than in the UK (62%) or US (56%).
By and large, consumers expect a range of delivery options when shopping online; 58% of Metapack respondents said they’d prioritized purchasing goods from one site over another because it provided more delivery options. Around seven in 10 respondents in France and the US were most likely to be tempted to switch if the choice of delivery options was suited to their needs.
France is especially known for its click-and-drive services, which allow shoppers to drive to a dedicated pickup depot—typically not a store—to collect their items. According to Nielsen and the Fédération du E-commerce et de la Vente à Distance (FEVAD), 4,421 such sites were available across France as of May 2018, and click-and-drive already accounted for half of total sales for the supermarket chain E. Leclerc. The number of drives in France had passed 5,100 by the end of the year, the same sources reported.
New versions of click-and-collect continue to emerge. “France’s food retailers are successfully developing a drive-thru version of ‘click-and-collect’ shopping, which may be vital to help them to defend market share and maintain profitability,” said Adrien Guerin, an analyst at ScopeRatings, a company ratings agency based in Germany, in a company press release. That optimism is in contrast to the negative outlook ScopeRatings forecast for France’s retailing sector overall in 2019.