For years we have been able to experience the wonder of not leaving our cars in fast food drive-thru's. But how great would it be if you could swing by your favourite shop and what you wanted was there waiting for you. No hassle, no fuss and great for when you have forgotten something pretty important - like Valentines Day. Last week Debenhams piloted the first ever drive-thru experience outside their Manchester Trafford Centre store to allow shoppers to pick up Valentines gifts without having to leave the comfort of their car.

Debenhams 'ran the service for one day only, allowing drivers to draw up to the first stand, order and pay, and then drive to the second stand to pick up their gifts. To make the process much more straight forward, they offered a choice of just five traditional Valentine's gifts - including a lingerie set and a chemise, trunks for men, perfume and champagne.'*

Okay yes, technically this wasn't entirely set up for Valentines Day, (probably more for publicity, along with pushing their Valentines gift options), because if you actually used the service on 7th February you still had a whole week to find the perfect gift in-store, and you even still had time to order something online.

'However, the idea does tap into a trend that companies have been trying to make work for them for the past five years - that of curation. The idea is that in the internet age, with access to endless retailers across the world, we have billions of potential items we could consider for Valentine's Day.
Clearly nobody can cope with that much choice. In fact, researchers have shown that with as few as ten choices we start to lose our ability to make a sensible rational decision, and we would much rather pick from a small handful of options.
What we are looking for, therefore is someone we trust to pick out a handful of absolute winners that we can pick from ourselves,'* and this is exactly what the activation at Debenhams was able to do.

Maybe we will see this idea replicated for other gift giving events or by other retailers in the future, hopefully closer the the event day itself. One thing for certain is that consumers need the appeal of shopping in-store. We have seen the increase of personal shopping and click and collect, but perhaps something like this could be the answer to a hassle free gifting service in the future. 


*http://money.aol.co.uk/2017/02/08/debenhams-launches-first-ever-drive-thru-will-it-catch-on/