EBay to expand click and collect in U.K.

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.

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 at Bloomberg’s London headquarters.

EBay, based in San Jose, Calif., 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. during Christmas were picked up from a store.

“Click and collect allows us to grow our seller base and increase our product range,” 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 have been growing at a faster rate than in the U.S., where the company is losing ground to larger competitor Amazon.com Inc.

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