by Walther Ploos van Amstel
For urban planners, retailers and logistics companies, the growing flow of products from manufacturer to consumer presents new challenges. What is the impact of increasing e-commerce in our European cities? And what can be done to facilitate this transformation of our shopping habits?
The growth of e-commerce is accompanied by an increasing distribution of parcels in cities resulting in externalities like traffic congestion or emissions. As a consequence, different delivery concepts like bike deliveries or delivery points have been suggested. Most companies will only accept these changes, if they do not result in higher cost of delivery.
New opportunities arise to design profitable last-mile delivery strategies. In particular, companies can influence customer behavior by choosing the lead-times or time-slots that are offered (capacity controls) and as well as their associated fees (pricing controls). These decisions ultimately seek to balance the capacity utilization and increase the profitability of the delivery operation.
Home deliveries are the preferred method of delivery for consumers today. But, due to the specific, costly nature of home deliveries together with changes within society e.g. people working longer and more flexible hours and the competition between logistics providers, new more sustainable alternatives are being implemented. Automated parcel lockers being such an alternative. Check …
Customer involvement is regarded as a new way to increase last mile efficiency. Improved delivery designs call for customer involvement although it is not clear how customers can be involved and what the consequences are for organizations and customers involved in the last mile.
Lots of attention has been given in recent years to the “massive” increase in delivery traffic in cities and residential districts. Web stores and the vans that deliver their parcels often get the blame for that. My neighbors wonder if it really can’t all just fit into one delivery van. They see PostNL, DHL, Albert …
Cyber-Monday is the day in which the Unites States consumers massively buy on line. The steady growth of e-commerce has many people worrying that streets will be overwhelmed by delivery trucks ferrying cardboard boxes from warehouses to our homes. Cityobservatory did a ‘fact check’.
More and more companies are offering their customers delivery options. CoolBlue offers “Ordered today, delivered tonight” service, for example. In the construction sector, it’s: “Ordered today, delivered to the site between 7 and 9 tomorrow morning” – unless you’d rather pick up your package at the pick-up point yourself tonight. Agreed is agreed. Customers expect precision-guided …