Cohen: First and foremost, improved customer experience. Today's customers want 24/7 service and expect to receive products immediately. BOPUS makes it much more convenient for the store's customers to pick up their desired merchandise. It also brings the customers into the store thereby increasing the traffic and making it more likely the customer will purchase other items. BOPUS also helps create brand loyalty and recurring customers and reduces the retailer's shipping costs.

GlobeSt.com: How successful are the retailers implementing BOPUS?

Cohen: BOPUS still isn't perfect in some cases. Surveys have shown that many customers said they have received poor customer service or their merchandise wasn't ready to be picked up when they got to the store after a click-and-collect purchase.

GlobeSt.com: Is BOPUS really helping the retailers?

Cohen: The upside of BOPUS is that in many cases, shoppers make impulse purchases when they come into the store to retrieve their items, thereby driving sales higher. According to the ICSC, 69% of shoppers who used click-and-collect last holiday season purchased additional items while picking up in store. The survey, which polled 1,014 consumers from Dec. 28 to Dec. 30, 2015 also found 36% of shoppers who used those types of services made another purchase in an adjacent store at the time of pick up.

The downside of BOPUS includes the fact that offering a click-and-collect option also adds new tasks for in-store staff, who have to pick and pack orders for shoppers in addition to their existing duties. Purchases completed through click-and-collect, is growing in use, with 49% of Americans trying it for the first time last year, according to an exclusive survey conducted for CNBC by consumer market research company InfoScout. The survey polled 1,000 consumers on Jan. 9 and 10 of 2016.

According to Slice Intelligence, which scans more than 3 million e-mail receipts, consumers used Walmart's buy online, pick up in store option the most during the holiday period, followed by Best Buy, Target, Kmart, and Macy's. Home Depot indicated a “significant portion” of sales growth comes from the intersection of its website and its stores. Home Depot also noted that over 40% of all of its online orders leverage their physical stores.

Kohl's CEO, Kevin Mansell, called its “buy online, pick up in store” a main driver for online-generated consumer demand, and said that more than 20% of the time, shoppers make additional purchases. In 2015, Target invested $1 billion in strengthening its e-commerce offerings, which include everything from grocery delivery, to ship from store and click-and-collect. Before 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, the time Target began its in-store doorbuster deals, the number of orders placed online for pickup in store rose by 35% over the prior year.

ATLANTA—Retailers are now battling e-commerce and the Internet in a variety of ways, including investing more money in websites and BOPUS—buy online and pick up at the store— technology. It's rapidly becoming a click-and-collect world.

In fact, last December more than one-third of holiday shoppers used BOPUS services. Consumers like it because there are no shipping costs and the instant gratification. From a product perspective, BOPUS is enabling brick-and-mortar stores to better compete against online retailers. BOPUS technology also allows retailers to have visibility of their inventory at a store level, which was not possible before.

While this is good news for brick-and-mortar stores, landlords and tenants should be aware of the issues created by retailers who offer these services. GlobeSt.com caught up with Jeremy Cohen, an attorney at commercial real estate firm Hartman Simons, to discuss this trend in this exclusive interview.

GlobeSt.com: What are the reasons retailers offer BOPUS?

Cohen: First and foremost, improved customer experience. Today's customers want 24/7 service and expect to receive products immediately. BOPUS makes it much more convenient for the store's customers to pick up their desired merchandise. It also brings the customers into the store thereby increasing the traffic and making it more likely the customer will purchase other items. BOPUS also helps create brand loyalty and recurring customers and reduces the retailer's shipping costs.

GlobeSt.com: How successful are the retailers implementing BOPUS?

Cohen: BOPUS still isn't perfect in some cases. Surveys have shown that many customers said they have received poor customer service or their merchandise wasn't ready to be picked up when they got to the store after a click-and-collect purchase.

GlobeSt.com: Is BOPUS really helping the retailers?

Cohen: The upside of BOPUS is that in many cases, shoppers make impulse purchases when they come into the store to retrieve their items, thereby driving sales higher. According to the ICSC, 69% of shoppers who used click-and-collect last holiday season purchased additional items while picking up in store. The survey, which polled 1,014 consumers from Dec. 28 to Dec. 30, 2015 also found 36% of shoppers who used those types of services made another purchase in an adjacent store at the time of pick up.

The downside of BOPUS includes the fact that offering a click-and-collect option also adds new tasks for in-store staff, who have to pick and pack orders for shoppers in addition to their existing duties. Purchases completed through click-and-collect, is growing in use, with 49% of Americans trying it for the first time last year, according to an exclusive survey conducted for CNBC by consumer market research company InfoScout. The survey polled 1,000 consumers on Jan. 9 and 10 of 2016.

According to Slice Intelligence, which scans more than 3 million e-mail receipts, consumers used Walmart's buy online, pick up in store option the most during the holiday period, followed by Best Buy, Target, Kmart, and Macy's. Home Depot indicated a “significant portion” of sales growth comes from the intersection of its website and its stores. Home Depot also noted that over 40% of all of its online orders leverage their physical stores.

Kohl's CEO, Kevin Mansell, called its “buy online, pick up in store” a main driver for online-generated consumer demand, and said that more than 20% of the time, shoppers make additional purchases. In 2015, Target invested $1 billion in strengthening its e-commerce offerings, which include everything from grocery delivery, to ship from store and click-and-collect. Before 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, the time Target began its in-store doorbuster deals, the number of orders placed online for pickup in store rose by 35% over the prior year.