French perfumery chain Marionnaud has launched Click & Connect Express 1h (1 hour), an upgrade to its existing Click & Connect service.
The Express version will allow clients to order online for delivery to a Marionnaud store in one hour.
Delivery time is a key issue for consumers, says Marionnaud, with a recent survey by GS1 finding that 41% of consumers buying online have given up mid-purchase due to too slow a delivery time.
“Marionnaud is the first actor in the beauty market to launch something like Click & Collect Express 1h,” Morad Akcha, the company’s Director of Information Systems and Digital Transformation, told Cosmetics Business.
“Unlike the Click & Collect we previously proposed, where the orders were prepared in warehouse and delivered in 24h to 48h, from now on we will use our key strength - namely 500 shops and our very responsive beauty advisers.
“A lot of energy has been put into involving the staff in the shops (about 3,000 of them) in order to fulfil this promise to our clients. This new service, which is easy to use, and available throughout France, answers to a strong demand from customers who want to have products available as quickly as possible.”
Customers can sign up for the new service via Marionnaud’s e-shop and will be alerted by email and SMS once their item is ready for pickup. They can also return it to any shop in the company’s network, provided that the store stocks the item in question.
Online sales are helping to steady the cosmetics market in France: although cosmetics sales in the French selective route saw a slight decline of 1% last year, online sales burgeoned, with a rise of 27%.