Dive Brief:

• Internal research from Wal-Mart showed on Tuesday that 90% of consumers are still in need of holiday gifts, prompting the retail giant to announce new pick up and delivery options for last-minute customers.

• Some orders placed online by 6 p.m. local time on Dec. 23 can be picked up for free on Christmas Eve in more than 3,900 of its stores nationwide, the retailer said. Qualifying items will be tagged “Free Pickup Today” and for the first time there’s a dedicated online page, so customers can easily see which items are eligible for the service. Stores will close at 6 p.m. local time on Christmas Eve, two hours earlier than in previous years.

• The cutoff for placing orders for delivery on Walmart.com is Dec. 22 at noon local time for rush delivery and Dec. 20 for standard delivery. The retailer is offering free two-day shipping on more than 1,500 toys from Dec. 14 to Dec. 21.

Dive Insight:

In-store pickup is popular among late shoppers unwilling to risk possible late deliveries. Target this year rolled out several enhancements to its buy online pickup in store program, dressing store associates in special uniforms and dedicating lines and speeding up same-day order availability. 

Same-day pickup has been “incredibly popular throughout the holiday season with 10 times as many pickup orders placed on peak days compared to an average day,” Wal-Mart stated in a blog post on Tuesday.

Experts say retailers would do well to keep stores well-stocked for omnichannel pickup and delivery, considering shippers UPS and FedEx are already struggling to deliver the surge of e-commerce orders and weather events could further complicate that.

“It makes sense to have the inventory closer to the customer,” Charles Dimov, marketing director at order management firm OrderDynamics, told Retail Dive. “Retailers need the intelligence to bring together the disparate systems. You might have an accurate view, without having the complete picture. A big differentiator among the retailers who‘ll be doing omnichannel well is having a good order system, with a full view of inventory, or enough of a view. That’s to the relief of the customer who can say ‘I’m going to go there right now to pick it up.’ What brand bonus that is.”

Late shoppers can also be a boon for retailers. Last year, last-minute shopping helped boost the season’s sales numbers, and shoppers are expected to continue shopping right up until the end of the month. “There will be heightened competition for online shoppers with significant online discounting extending to the Saturday before Christmas,” Traci Gregorski, senior vice president of marketing at Market Track, said earlier this year. “Last year we saw discounts on many hot holiday items at 40% below the Black Friday sale price toward the end of the season.” 

This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the 2016 holiday shopping season. You can browse our holiday page for more stories.