Order Online for Discounts, Pickup Offline at Store!

The WSJ reports on an emerging trend among cross-channel retailers such as Wal-Mart, Circuit City, etc., wherein they are offering discounts to holiday shoppers - who order online, but come to their store to collect the goods. Not just that - if you are made to wait at the offline store more than the promised time, you get gift cards and coupons as well. Apparently, the traditional brick-and-mortar retailer is only now warming up to the potential of the web to send more customers to their store, but one wonders if this would really give them the edge to grab a share of the ever growing online retaining pie.