Dive Brief:

• Walgreens announced on Monday that it will begin offering in-store pickup of online orders at more than 7,600 locations, according to a company press release. 

• The drugstore retailer, which runs Walgreens and Duane Reade stores, said that online and mobile orders delivered to stores will have no additional cost or minimum. Online orders delivered to a residence or workplace require a $35 minimum order.

• Walgreens said it has expanded its online merchandise, and the new policy applies to “eligible” items, according to the release, which also states that orders are typically ready for pickup within three days if not the same day.

Dive Insight:

Buy-online, pickup in-store services are on the rise in the U.S. and abroad. According to data published early this year by Retail Systems Research and SPS Commerce, 61% of retailers worldwide now offer some kind BOPIS, otherwise known as "click-and-collect," service in effort to make it easier for customers to purchase items online and retrieve them in the physical world. 

While many retailers offer same-day delivery, those services are largely relegated to big-city centers. A far more common situation for most Americans is that their favorite stores are often somewhere on their commute from work or along the path of their regular schedule of errands, Jaron Waldman, co-founder and CEO of Curbside, which provides customer-arrival detection software, inventory management tools and other white-label solutions, told Retail Dive earlier this year. 

Some retailers have tried curbside services, where customers don’t have to leave their cars to retrieve items purchased online. However, Target this summer abandoned its curbside experiment in favor of in-store pickup, showing it might be a better omnichannel option. Picking up in store provides a particularly convenient way for most shoppers to pick up digital purchases the same day, Waldman says.

“We think, in the mainstream, people want the convenience as they’re driving around,” Waldman told Retail Dive. “Stores are located in these corridors that we drive anyway ... That’s a win, and a much bigger opportunity than same-day delivery.”