Walmart Is Adding Pickup Towers To 500 Stores

Source: Business Insider, Daniel Keyes

Walmart is bringing Pickup Towers, its large in-store kiosks for online orders, to 500 new stores by the end of the year, at which point they’ll be in approximately 700 locations, according to a company blog post.

The towers were first tested in a singular store in Walmart’s home state of Arkansas. They were then brought to more than a dozen stores in July 2017, and plans for a 100 store expansion were announced soon after. The initiative’s rapid expansion likely speaks to its popularity among consumers, with Walmart reporting that over half a million orders have been retrieved from Pickup Towers since their introduction.

Pickup Towers help facilitate the click-and-collect process for Walmart and consumers. The kiosks are generally located near stores’ entrances to speed up the pickup process when consumers choose to collect their online orders in-store. They scan a barcode from the receipt of their online purchase, at which point the tower releases their order on a conveyor belt. This way, consumers don’t need to flag down a store associate and wait around to pickup their purchases, and employees don’t need to get wrapped up in the process.

And Walmart is adding to the vending machine-like structure’s capabilities.

Each new Pickup Tower will feature Pickup Lockers to enable easy pickup of larger items.The towers cannot be used for bigger items like TV’s, but the new lockers will be able to hold such products, making it possible to click-and-collect far more items from Walmart. This may allow Walmart to offer convenient pickup lockers to rival Amazon Lockers, which Amazon has been adding to Whole Foods stores. And with Walmart’s huge brick-and-mortar network, the new lockers may allow it to offer a level of convenience that Amazon can’t.

It’s also working on an app that will let shoppers use Pickup Towers for returns, according to PlanetRetail RNG as cited by Retail Dive.While the exact mechanisms that would be involved in such a process are unclear, making the towers returns-friendly gives them additional value to consumers. Incorporating Pickup Towers in the Mobile Express Returns program Walmart launched last October could make its speedy returns program even faster, encouraging more consumers to shop on Walmart.com because they’ll know making returns will be easy.

Expanding Pickup Towers and related initiatives should help Walmart leverage its brick-and-mortar network to bolster its online business. Walmart’s huge number of stores is an advantage it holds over all competitors, and Pickup Towers may make it the favorite e-tailer for shoppers interested in click-and-collect. And better yet, Walmart saves on shipping costs when consumers use the Pickup Towers, further helping its e-commerce performance.

http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-is-adding-pickup-towers-to-500-stores