Case Study: How Pargo Enabled Loot To Extend Their Customer Footprint In Inaccessible Areas Through Click & Collect

Overview 

 

Loot is one of South Africa’s ecommerce giants, offering customers an incomprehensibly large range of over 17 million products at the touch of a button. As a business committed to the convenience of online shopping, Loot partnered with last-mile logistics company, Pargo, to extend their customer footprint by empowering them with the option to choose Click & Collect for delivery.

Thanks to this partnership, Loot customers can shop online and choose to collect their orders at any one of Pargo’s over 2 500 pickup points conveniently located in popular retail stores, like Clicks, Freshstop and Spar. With Pargo’s Pickup Point network covering more than 87% of South Africa’s postal codes, Loot customers can now collect their orders whenever they want, wherever they are.

   

The Problem

 

Traditional delivery methods like door delivery are not viable for all South Africans. 21% of South Africans live in informal settlements and over 35.7% in rural areas, making delivery costly and challenging at best. This reality results in a large proportion of the population having limited to no convenient access to online shopping.

Jenna Bloch, Head of Marketing at Loot, explains, “Not all of our customers have a weekday/workday place where a parcel can be delivered.”

Even for those living in urban areas, door delivery may not be convenient or possible because they lead fast-paced lives in and around office blocks, security complexes and large apartment buildings. For these reasons, delivery optionality is becoming a key factor influencing consumer purchasing decisions as 58% of consumers choose to purchase goods from one etailer over another because they provided more delivery options.

   

The Solution?

 

Pargo Click & Collect! Recognising the opportunity to bring added value to their customers by offering them more convenient delivery options, Loot joined forces with the largest Click & Collect provider in South Africa, Pargo.

Pargo operates a vast nationwide network of over 2 500 pickup points in more than 87% of South Africa’s postal codes, allowing consumers to collect their online orders at a time and place that suits their needs best.

By simply integrating Pargo delivery on their check-out page, Loot could bring the convenience of online shopping to those whose lifestyles and circumstances do not allow for easy and affordable door delivery. Now customers only need to choose Pargo Click & Collect at check-out, the pickup point of their choice and when to collect their order once delivered, for quick, easy and affordable delivery.

“Thanks to Pargo, we can easily reach all the corners of South Africa and expand our customer footprint”, continues Jenna Bloch.

   

The Results

 

Around 2 000 Loot customers across the country use Click & Collect every month since the partnership with Pargo began and the numbers continue to grow.

On the fruitful partnership with Pargo, Jenna Bloch comments,

“When we reached the first 1 000 deliveries with Pargo, it showed us that Click & Collect is a service our customers needed and were looking for, and [Pargo] was able to fulfil that need with ease.”

Once Loot customers experience the convenience of Click & Collect, it is likely to become habit-forming. Pargo’s data shows that Loot customers will typically use Click & Collect again after their initial trial.

Recognising the convenience that Pargo’s Click & Collect offers their customers, Loot ensured that their next ecommerce venture, StyleMode.co.za, launched with full Pargo Click & Collect integration. Jenna Bloch explains,

“It was a natural addition for us to add the convenience of Pargo Click & Collect delivery when we built the StyleMode.co.za website, it was important for us that our StyleMode customers experience the same conveniences as all Loot customers.”

Through Pargo, Loot has successfully delivered parcels to many remote towns including Nqutu (population est. 5 453) in KwaZulu Natal, Carnarvon (population est. 6 612) in the Northern Cape and Morgenzon (population est. 1 893) in Limpopo just as easily as they deliver to major cities like Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban.