Benefit from a high store visiting cost in an omnichannel with BOPS

Omnichannel sales surge in the coronavirus pandemic. This paper establishes an analytical model to study when a firm can benefit from implementing the omnichannel strategy of buy-online and pick-up in-store (BOPS), where the market characteristics are captured by the two-dimensional heterogeneity of product valuation and online waiting cost. The increase in the store visiting cost will reduce BOPS consumers' willingness to pay, but it will also strengthen the encroachment of BOPS on traditional dual-channel. The results show that the firm can benefit from the BOPS strategy when the store visiting cost is relatively high. This well explains the rapid development of the omnichannel with BOPS because of a high store visiting cost during COVID-19. Furthermore, sharply contrasting to the traditional dual-channel sales in which a higher store visiting cost always hurts the firm, the profit under BOPS can be nonmonotonic in the store visiting cost and the firm can benefit from a higher store visiting cost. Specifically, the combination of cross-selling effect