Azernews.Az

By Bloomberg

EBay Inc. plans to expand its click-and- collect service in the U.K. and across Europe, after buyers on its site collected 1.5 million parcels from British store chain Argos in the first 18 months of the service being available.

Click and collect is becoming “the dominant way that consumers want their online purchases to be fulfilled” in the U.K., EBay’s senior vice president for Europe Paul Todd said in an interview at Bloomberg’s London headquarters.

EBay, based in San Jose, California, is looking at all kinds of partnerships to boost its presence, Todd said. The Argos service, covering about 750 stores across Britain, is used by about 160,000 EBay merchants.

Click-and-collect services are booming in Europe as more shoppers choose to fetch their purchase from a store rather than risk missing a home delivery. More than half of online orders placed with John Lewis department stores in the U.K. last Christmas were picked up from a store. France’s Darty Plc said Thursday that 20 percent of all Web sales in the fourth quarter were collected, up from about 10 percent a year ago.

“Click and collect allows us to grow our seller base and increase our product range,” EBay’s Todd said.

Britain, where researcher Mintel estimates that 17 percent of all online retail sales will be collected from stores this year, is becoming increasingly important for EBay. For the last two years, the online marketplace’s sales in the country have been growing at a faster rate than in the U.S., where the company is losing ground to larger competitor Amazon.com Inc.

Huge Opportunity

Surplus space in U.K. supermarkets may be one avenue that the company explores to boost its collection capabilities. J Sainsbury Plc said this month that about a quarter of its stores will have some under-utilized space in the next five years. The need for grocers to fill that space presents a “huge opportunity” for EBay, Todd said.

The company is open to the possibility of expanding its partnership with Argos parent Home Retail Group Plc to include Homebase do-it-yourself stores in future, he said. It’s also testing a new service that allows Ebay sellers to drop off items at Argos stores.

“We are assessing the commencement of a very small operational trial for EBay sellers in southern England to drop off sold items at their local Argos store to be shipped directly to buyers homes,” Shane Conway, an EBay spokesman, said via e- mail.