The retailer has expanded click and collect in a bid to offer more choice and convenience.

Following a successful trial in Tasmania, Bunnings is now launching its Click & Collect service in Victoria before progressively rolling out the offer across Australia and New Zealand.

Bunnings managing director, Mike Schneider told Appliance Retailer, “We had a really great response from our Tasmanian customers and while it’s still very early days for Victoria, we’ve already had a number of orders come through.”

He said the service is all about offering customers even more choice and convenience and giving them the ability to shop wherever they want and whenever they want.

Despite the Click & Collect roll-out coming much later when compared to other major retailers, Schneider said Bunnings has spent many years building a strong digital eco-system with engaging content, information and inspiration for projects around the home.

“Customers are highly engaged with this and the Bunnings website is the third most visited shopping and classified website in Australia, even before we began transacting online,” he said.

“We naturally extended this in February 2018 when we launched our special orders range to transact online and part of our learnings from this was that we found the large majority of customers were choosing to pick their items up in store and we knew that this was something that our customers value.”

When asked about market trends, Schneider pointed to change when it comes to the way that customers think about products, the things they do inside and outside of their home, and changes in the digital landscape as well.

“It’s not about selling more hammers or nails online but the way customers are using technology and the products that are being used inside their homes and we need to think about how we make their experience with Bunnings seamless every time.

“There are also some interesting societal trends that we are seeing. For example, people want to stay in their homes longer so we are thinking more about independent living products, while young adults are either staying at home longer, renting longer and typically looking at how they can undertake simple projects that personalise their living space. Likewise the next generation of homeowners are typically buying later, working longer, with kids and family formation starting later.”

He said this impacts the way Bunnings thinks about serving its customers and the hardware store is focused on engaging with customers in a meaningful way both online and in-store.

As for the remainder of 2019: “Bunnings will continue to increase its digital capabilities and roll out of Click and Collect across Australia. Live chat is one element in the evolution of our offer and we have had it in play for some time. It has enabled us to provide greater customer assistance online and we will continue to test and learn with this technology. We also recently introduced ratings and product reviews online to support our click and collect offer, along with new payment method choices including PayPal and ZipPay”.