fast logistics in the b2c ecommerce: a global overview fortin… · fast logistics in the b2c...
TRANSCRIPT
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
1
POLITECNICO DI MILANO
SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL AND INFORMATION ENGINEERING
MASTER OF SCIENCE IN MANAGEMENT ENGINEERING
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
CANDIDATE: SUPERVISOR: Veronica Fortini (842408) Prof. Riccardo Mangiaracina
CO-SUPERVISORS: Dott. Samuele Fraternali Dott.ssa Denise Ronconi
Academic Year 2016/2017
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
3
Index
ABSTRACT 9
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 10
1. Introduction 18
2. Literature Review 21
2.1 Methodology 21
2.1.1 Scope of the analysis 21
2.1.2 Selection process 21
2.1.3 Review method 22
2.2 Summary of review and discussion 23
2.2.1 Main characteristics of the papers examined 24
2.2.2 Research methods used 27
2.3 Discussion of themes arising from the review 29
2.3.1 Research area 30
2.3.2 First matrix classification: speed of delivery – type of activity 32
2.3.3 Second matrix classification: speed of the logistics process -field
of application 50
2.4 Conclusions from literature review and directions for future
research 58
3. Research objective and methodology 65
3.1 Objective 66
3.2 Methodology 67
4. Empirical analysis 77
4.1 First empirical analysis: single-variable classifications 77
4.1.1 Global context 77
4.1.1.1 Merchants’ sample size 77
4.1.1.2 Breakdown by channel, web technology and commodity
sector 78
4.1.1.3 Split by delivery speed 80
4.1.1.4 Service providers 83
4.1.2 United States 84
4.1.2.1 Breakdown by channel, web technology and commodity
sector 85
4.1.2.2 Split by delivery speed 86
4.1.2.3 In-depth analysis of logistics providers, related cost,
coverage and type 88
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
4
4.1.2.4 Logistics technologies and alternatives to last-mile
delivery 91
4.1.2.5 Additional services: real-time tracking, date/time choice
and pre-delivery contacts 92
4.1.3 United Kingdom 93
4.1.3.1 Breakdown by channel, web technology and commodity
sector 94
4.1.3.2 Split by delivery speed 95
4.1.3.3 In-depth analysis of logistics providers, related cost,
coverage and type 96
4.1.3.4 Logistics technologies and alternatives to last-mile
delivery 97
4.1.3.5 Additional services: real-time tracking, date/time choice
and pre-delivery contacts 99
4.1.4 Other European countries (France, Germany, Italy , Spain) 100
4.1.4.1 Breakdown by channel, web technology and commodity
sector 101
4.1.4.2 Split by delivery speed 104
4.1.4.3 In-depth analysis of logistics providers, related cost,
coverage and type 107
4.1.4.4 Logistics technologies and alternatives to last-mile
delivery 112
4.1.4.5 Additional services: real-time tracking, date/time choice
and pre-delivery contacts 114
4.1.5 Asian countries (China, India, Japan and South Korea) 116
4.1.5.1 Breakdown by channel, web technology and commodity
sector 117
4.1.5.2 Split by delivery speed 120
4.1.5.3 In-depth analysis of logistics providers, related cost,
coverage and type 123
4.1.5.4 Logistics technologies and alternatives to last-mile
delivery 129
4.1.5.5 Additional services: real-time tracking, date/time choice
and pre-delivery contacts 131
4.1.6 Conclusions and insights from first empirical classifications 133
4.2 Second empirical analysis: double-variable classifications 139
4.2.1 Commodity sector – merchant’s business nature 140
4.2.1.1 Next Day 140
4.2.1.2 Same Day 143
4.2.1.3 Less than six hours 146
4.2.2 Commodity sector – geographical coverage 148
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
5
4.2.2.1 Next Day 148
4.2.2.2 Same Day 148
4.2.2.3 Less than six hours 152
4.2.3 Commodity sector – type of logistics service 152
4.2.3.1 Next Day 152
4.2.3.2 Same Day 155
4.2.3.3 Less than six hours 158
4.2.4 Commodity sector – used transportation means 159
4.2.4.1 Next Day 159
4.2.4.2 Same Day 160
4.2.4.3 Less than six hours 161
4.2.5 Conclusions and insight from second empirical analysis 162
5. Final conclusions 165
BIBLIOGRAPHY 168
SITOGRAPHY 172
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
6
TABLES INDEX Table 1 – main characteristics of the examined papers 31
Table 1 - Area of research of papers examined 37
Table 2 – first classification: addressed activities vs. speed of delivery 41
Table 3 - second classification: speed of logistics vs. application field 58
Table 4 - global merchants' quantity 81
Table 5 - global merchants' excluded non-interesting cases 82
Table 6 - global merchants' market channel 83
Table 7 - global merchants' web technology 83
Table 8 - global merchants' sector 84
Table 9 - global merchants' delivery time 85
Table 10 - global merchants' service providers
88
Table 11 - US merchants' market channel 89
Table 12 - US merchants' web technology 89
Table 13 - US merchants' sector 90
Table 14 - US merchants' delivery time
90
Table 15 - US merchants' service providers 92
Table 16 - US merchants' delivery cost
93
Table 17 - US merchants' geographic coverage 94
Table 18 - US merchants' logistics type 95
Table 19 - US merchants' transportation means 96
Table 20 - US merchants' last-mile alternatives
96
Table 21 - US merchants' tracking systems 97
Table 22 - US merchants' time choice 97
Table 23 - US merchants' contacts 97
Table 24 - UK retailers' market channel 98
Table 25 - UK retailers' web technology 98
Table 26 - UK retailers' sector
99
Table 27 - UK retailers' delivery time 99
Table 28 - UK retailers' service provider 100
Table 29 - UK retailers' delivery cost 100
Table 30 - UK retailers' geographic coverage
101
Table 31 - UK retailers' logistics type 101
Table 32 - UK retailers' transportation means 101
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
7
Table 33 - UK retailers' last-mile alternatives 102
Table 34 - UK retailers' tracking systems 103
Table 35 - UK retailers' day/time choice 103
Table 36 - UK retailers' contacts 104
Table 37 - European merchants' market channel 105
Table 38 - European merchants' web technology 106
Table 39 - European merchants' sector 108
Table 40 - European merchants' delivery time 109
Table 41 - European merchants' service providers 112
Table 42 - European merchants' delivery cost 114
Table 43 - European merchants' geographic coverage 115
Table 44 - European merchants' logistics type 116
Table 45 - European merchants' transportation means 117
Table 46 - European merchants' last-mile alternatives 118
Table 47 - European merchants' tracking system 119
Table 48 - European merchants' day/time choice 119
Table 49 - European merchants' contacts 120
Table 50 - Asian retailers' market channel
122
Table 51 - Asian retailers' web technology 123
Table 52 - Asian retailers' sector 124
Table 53 - Asian retailers' delivery time 125
Table 54 - Asian retailers' service providers 128
Table 55 - Asian retailers' delivery cost 129
Table 56 - Asian retailers' geographical coverage
131
Table 57 - Asian retailers' logistics type 132
Table 58 - Asian retailers' transportation means 134
Table 59 - Asian retailers' last-mile alternatives 135
Table 60 - Asian retailers' tracking system
136
Table 61 - Asian retailers' day/time choice 137
Table 62 - Asian retailers' contacts 138
Table 63 - sector vs. channel next day global 145
Table 64 - sector vs. channel next day US 145
Table 65 - sector vs. channel next day UK 146
Table 66 - sector vs. channel next day Europe 147
Table 67 - sector vs. channel next day Asia 147
Table 68 - sector vs. channel same day global 148
Table 69 - sector vs. channel same day US 148
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
8
Table 70 - sector vs. channel same day UK
149
Table 71 - sector vs. channel same day Europe 149
Table 72 - sector vs. channel same day Asia
150
Table 73 - sector vs. channel <6h global 150
Table 74 - sector vs. channel <6h US 151
Table 75 - sector vs. channel <6h Europe 151
Table 76 - sector vs. channel <6h Asia 152
Table 77 - sector vs. coverage next day global 152
Table 78 - sector vs. coverage same day global 153
Table 79 - sector vs. coverage same day US 153
Table 80 - sector vs. coverage same day UK
154
Table 81 - sector vs. channel same day Europe 155
Table 82 - sector vs. coverage same day Asia 156
Table 83 - sector vs. coverage <6h global 156
Table 84 - sector vs. logistics next day global 157
Table 85 - sector vs. logistics next day US 157
Table 86 - sector vs. logistics next day Europe 158
Table 87 - sector vs. logistics next day Asia 159
Table 88 - sector vs. logistics same day global 160
Table 89 - sector vs. logistics same day US 160
Table 90 - sector vs. logistics same day Europe
161
Table 91 - sector vs. logistics same day Asia 162
Table 92 - sector vs. logistics <6h global 163
Table 93 - sector vs. vehicles next day global 164
Table 94 - sector vs. vehicles same day global 165
Table 95 - sector vs. vehicles <6h global 166
FIGURES INDEX Figure 1 - two-dimensional classification along with research method 41 Figure 2 - two-dimensional classification along with research method 59
Figure 3 - extract from database: merchants' number, name, service provider,
country, market channels and web technology 70
Figure 4 - extract from database: retailers' sector, delivery time and other time
features 72
Figure 5 - extract from database: delivery cost and its characteristics 73
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
9
Figure 6 - extract from database: geographic coverage and delivery area's details74
Figure 7 - extract from database: logistics service type, operator, name and
vehicles used 75
Figure 8 - extract from database: last-mile alternatives and real-time tracking 76
Figure 9 - extract from database: day/time choice and duration, contacts before
delivery and useful websites 77
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
10
ABSTRACT This research aims at providing an in-depth analysis of the current initiatives
of fast delivery in the eCommerce business. Given the strong growth of the
Internet in the last decades and the corresponding development of the channel of
online sales, one of the most challenging topics that merchants have to face
regards the way in which they have to organize and manage their logistics
fulfillment processes, that are much more complex in the eCommerce with
respect to the traditional channels.
The methodology adopted for providing this overview comprehends a first
analysis of the existing literature about this topic: articles have been collected
from the most utilized scientific libraries and they have been analyzed first
according to their area of research, then through a matrix in which the speed of
the delivery process they described was crossed with the type of activities tackles;
lastly, another matrix have been provided in order to match again the speed of
the logistics process subject of the article with the main field of application of the
contribution.
Having then outdrawn comments on findings, from the main gaps
highlighted in the literature review a second analysis have been performed
having as subject of research the sample of main merchants actually working in
the eCommerce; rankings on top players in the sector have allowed to find which
the most important players were and the an extensive research on the most
common web browsers have been performed for each of them in order to collect
a huge amount of data about the delivery services they offered, which have been
collected in a database.
Data have been previously analyzed by considering one single field of the
database at a time and then have been crossed together in some double-variable
classifications in which mainly similarities and differences according to the
commodity sector of belonging of the merchants have been investigated.
All the analyses made on real examples have provided a complete overview of
the up-to-date online market for what concerns fast and non-fast delivery
options, providing some interesting insights for practitioners’ development.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
11
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Premise
This research aims at providing an in-depth analysis of the up-to-date
situation in relation to initiatives of fast delivery in the eCommerce business.
Given the strong growth of the Internet in the last decades and the
corresponding high development of the channel of online sales, one of the most
challenging topics that merchants have to face regards the way in which they
have to organize and manage their logistics fulfillment processes, that are much
more complex in the eCommerce with respect to the traditional channels made
of physical stores. As next day delivery initiatives have almost become a common
trend at a worldwide level, the disruption resulting from same day delivery
services’ diffusion will be even greater, having the potential of fundamentally
changing the way online shopping is performed. Therefore, the trend of fast
deliveries is under development in these years and it represents a rich source of
cases.
Research objective
The objective of the research is the one of collecting and classifying most
interesting initiatives in order to provide not only directions for future research
to academicians, but also to allow market practitioners to get insights from
existing cases for their own services’ development, increasing more and more the
diffusion of such practices in the actual context and improving the service level.
In an attempt to provide a complete picture of the current situation for what
concerns fast logistics in business-to-consumer eCommerce, the objective of the
thesis has been formalized in the following questions:
1) Which are the most relevant real examples of merchants operating in the
eCommerce at a worldwide level?
2) How many of these merchants carry out their e-fulfillment process not
going beyond the next day from order reception? And how many among
them offer even faster options?
3) Which commonalities and/or differences exist among initiatives belonging
to different geographical areas?
4) Which commodity sectors are interested by this kind of initiatives? Are
there any commonalities and/or differences in the initiatives’ feature
among the industries?
5) What are the latest trends about the main features of logistics activities
and about the technologies employed for the provision of this kind of
services?
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
12
Methodology
The first action taken for taking an updated picture has been a literature
review focused on a set of 52 selected papers published from 2001 to 2017 in 39
international journals. Among these contributions, some other literature reviews
dealing with internet shopping and home deliveries were found, but the majority
of them presented a number of limitations related either to their put in writing
time (i.e. lack of recent contributions, e.g. Lee and Whang, 2001) or to their
content (i.e. focus on last-mile shipment only and its impact on city logistics,
without addressing the whole process from order receipt; e.g. Visser et al., 2014;
Savelsbergh and Van Woensel, 2016). Just one paper proposed a recent review
(2016) and tackled all supply chain management activities in eCommerce, from
order picking to final delivery, but it was providing a set of practices
implemented by real companies without addressing fast delivery issue in a
comprehensive manner (Yu et al., 2016). So this review was carried out in order to
overcome the above-mentioned limitations and was organized into three main
sub-sections: discussion of main characteristics (i.e. year of publication, journal
title and type, regions addressed), research method and content of each paper.
This review presented a number of gaps not adequately addressed yet or not
considered at all.
First, the analyzed literature refers primarily to few industries such as grocery,
food in general and consumer electronics, while other sectors such as clothing,
books, cosmetics have not been examined at all. This represents a gap, especially
for what concerns clothing industry, because it is the one having seen the highest
growth in sales in the last years and also having experienced a significant growth
of companies approaching same day or next day deliveries, especially in big cities
and in case of last-minute orders (e.g. on Christmas or other holiday occasions);
additionally, its supply chain is of relevant complexity.
Second, most attention is paid to the management of the delivery activity
alone, from the moment in which the order leaves the distribution center to the
end customer’s reception of it; even if it is surely a very complex activity to be
performed and its last portion, the one occurring inside cities and having the
name of last-mile, is complex and the one representing the service performance
directly experienced by the customer, other activities are part of the delivery
process too and should be tackled with more attention: picking has an impact too
on the overall order cycle time and for sure a comprehensive approach which
considers both picking and delivery could get to larger benefits.
Third, while contributions about cycle times of more than two days are
common, a little has been written about faster processes. Longer delivery options
have now been overcome by same day and next day deliveries, which are
becoming (or already are, in more developed areas) industry standards
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
13
(Hausmann et al., 2014); this means that a lot of cases are spreading and these
practices need to be deeply studied and carefully analyzed as they could provide
very interesting insights and drive future development of the business-to-
consumer eCommerce field.
Lastly, too much space is occupied by empirical contributions (i.e. case
studies and surveys), especially for what concerns fast and same day delivery
classes: a wider investigation in the field will allow academics to gather a relevant
number of data and examples so as to develop articles of more general validity,
which could be used by practitioners as frameworks in order to guide their
operative strategies.
All these gaps have been useful in order to formalize the research questions.
Then starting from these highlighted gaps, a depth research has been
performed by investigating examples of delivery options offered by real
merchants operating in the eCommerce channel through the access to the digital
edition of a guide on top 2013 e-retailers; it is called “Internet retailer – portal to
eCommerce intelligence” and it provides profiles, statistics, contacts and analyses
of the largest retailers in a certain geographical area; in particular its versions
split by continent have been utilized, having so one ranking for European
countries, one for Asian continent and the third dedicated to United States
situation only. For Asian and European countries, top 25 players in the ranking
were identified for further research (with the exception of Spain, which was a bit
poorer in terms of relevant online players and the ranking only involved 14
retailers); for US instead, the field was so big that the analysis was extended to
the group of first 60 actors in the national ranking. So for each nation, all
websites belonging to the group of identified top merchants were searched on the
Internet and deeply studied, with a particular attention to the process of orders’
fulfillment and final delivery to customers. Then, all collected information have
been inserted in a database organized according to the following fields:
number in the national ranking: allowing to have an idea of merchants’
relevance inside their country of belonging in terms of sales;
merchant name;
service provider name;
country of belonging of the merchant;
Dot Com/traditional player;
pure player/multichannel retailer;
desktop/mobile website;
commodity sector: sector in which the player operates, identifying in a
precise manner the type of products sold and moved during the service’
supply; we have Clothing, Cosmetics & Perfumery, General, Grocery,
Home & Furniture, Informatics & general electronics, Publishing sectors
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
14
and then other industries of minor presence among which we can find
Childcare, Drugs, Eyewear, Flowers, Music stores and Office supplies;
time for the delivery service: considering services which take more time
than what represents our interest area, we can find different hours’ ranges
surpassing the 24 hours for service provision (e.g. web retailers delivering
in between 48 and 96 hours, others in 48 hours, others between 24 and 72
hours or between 24 and 48 hours); moving instead towards faster
services, we first find merchants operating within the next day or the next
morning (if they are able to assure delivery within lunch time of the day
after order submission); then we have same day operators; in the end,
there is a cluster of websites offering deliveries which do not overcome 6
hours for the whole service provision (some declare of taking less than 6
hours for delivery but without specifying a fixed time, while some others
assure services operating in between 1 and 2 hours or even taking less than
1 hour to be performed). Among all the websites examined, we found also
merchants not offering express services at all (i.e. typically serving
customers in not less than 2 or 3 days and even more), that have been
classified as “non fast” and for which data collection activity has stopped at
this stage as they do not represent the focus of the research. In addition,
there were also websites which were impossible to access and about which
no information could be found even searching through the more
traditional web browsers, together with sites of retailers providing services
and not physical items (and so not arranging any picking and delivery
activity for their business’ nature) and finally websites shut down (it could
be because after some test time they closed the online channel resorting to
more traditional ones or because they went bankrupt); all these cases were
obviously immediately excluded from the database;
additional time information;
hour limit in order to get on-time delivery;
delivery timeframes;
cost type: the delivery service has usually an own cost which adds up to
the one of bought items; this cost can be fixed, variable, fixed but
becoming free once reached a certain expense for the goods (and the same
can happen in case of variable cost) or in few cases offered for free no
matter the expense’s amount;
criteria taken into consideration for variable cost;
exact value of the delivery expense;
exact value of items’ expense to be reached in order to get free delivery;
minimum expense imposed for order submission;
price peculiarities: filled only if some peculiarities exist (e.g. a phone
number is provided and only by calling it the customer can know the exact
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
15
delivery expense or money-back guarantee is assured to customers if the
order is not delivered by the promised time window or if a maximum
number of articles which can be bought within one order exist, etc.);
international coverage;
national coverage;
local coverage;
coverage area;
logistics type (internal/outsourcing/crowd-sourcing): variable identifying
if all the logistics activities are performed internally by the retailer itself
(or at most by a logistics spin-off appositely created for serving a specific
e-retailer and belonging to the same owning group) or if they are left to an
external operator found on the logistics market or lastly, if they are
performed according to the crowd-sourcing model (i.e. there is an external
entity which doesn’t operate as a physical distributor owning assets and
fleets and having couriers working under its direct dependence, but it only
works as an inter-change platform, collecting independent couriers who
work autonomously with their own transportation means and connecting
them with retailers in search of someone to perform home delivery);
preferred logistics operator;
service name;
transportations means’ peculiarity: filled in case a web merchant (or in its
place the provider of the logistics service) resorts to a very specific type of
means only. We can find cases in which more traditional means as vans or
refrigerated vans only are adopted; then we have cases in which the
preferred vehicle utilized is the car. Moving to two-wheeled vehicles we
can find retailers employing indiscriminately bicycles and motorbikes,
while others provide their couriers exclusively with bicycles; there is also
the eco-friendly option in which couriers use electric bicycles for
performing final delivery. In the end moving to air transportation we have
cases in which the airplane is the only mean utilized or innovative
merchants putting in place delivery by drones;
click & collect in-store (as first last-mile delivery alternative);
parcel locker’s pickup (as second last-mile delivery alternative);
other collection point (additional diverse last-mile alternatives);
additional information on last-mile alternative: descriptive variable in
which all information regarding every delivery alternative offered by a
retailer (and explained in its website) are collected; it provides the
alternative description (in case it doesn’t involve in-store collection and/or
parcel locker) (e.g. convenience stores agreed upon collection service with
the retailer and having a terminal dedicated to collection of online orders;
or terminals belonging to a particular logistics operator allied with the
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
16
retailer such as UPS, Colissimo, Chronopost, Hermes points, etc.; or again
delivery in the store’s car park or directly inside vehicle’s trunk; etc.), the
hourly limit for order submission in order to get the alternative or the
specific time window taken by the alternative to be performed;
real-time tracking;
choice of the day/timeframe of delivery;
chosen timeframe duration;
pre-delivery contacts: descriptive variable in which, if present (otherwise
the value is “no”), the moment in which customers have the opportunity of
being directly in contact with the courier carrying their order with
him/her is identified. It could be just a notification to confirm that an
order has been received or a notification of goods pickup in the warehouse
and then of shipment; or it can be the opportunity of speaking with the
courier before he/she starts its delivery tour in order to arrange all the
details for an efficient delivery; or it can even be the option of receiving,
together with delivery details, also courier’s name and image to make the
delivery process always easier;
information on pre-delivery contacts: it reports the nature of contacts with
logistics operators and the technological mean utilized for the
communication (e.g. call, e-mail, text or notification on the website and
details about the exact time in which this communication takes place); of
course this field is filled in only when a pre-delivery contact occurs;
useful websites.
With the data collected in the database, some classifications and analyses
have been performed.
First of all single-variable classifications have been carried out by considering
one database’s field at a time and giving a first overview at a worldwide level,
then deeply investigated by splitting for different geographies of interest.
A second analysis have been carried out by crossing two variables: the first
one was always the commodity sector and the second ones have been selected in
order to find out if some commonalities and/or differences existed among
merchants belonging to different industries; they are the merchant’s business
nature (Dot Com pure player/traditional multichannel actor), the geographic
coverage of the service, the logistics’ type of the provider and lastly the
peculiarity (if any) of vehicles utilized for performing the distribution activity.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
17
Results
All the aforementioned analyses got to the formalization of the following
answers to the research questions:
1) The most relevant cases of actual merchants operating in the eCommerce
nowadays belong to United States, immediately followed by United
Kingdom and then, some steps away, by France and Germany. The rest of
the European continent and the Asian countries represent a still too
under-developed context with respect to the first players (especially in
comparison with the United States). The worldwide market is still in
general strongly characterized by traditional retailers having added
eCommerce as their secondary or even third business, in an attempt of
implementing a multichannel strategy in order to increase their often
already stable market share; however, most of them have already
understood the potential of mobile devices’ diffusion and have developed
applications to increase the degree of pervasiveness into the market. Most
relevant actors in the actual context still belong to already strongly web
developed sectors of Clothing and Informatics, but other more recent
industries such as General and Grocery sectors are moving forward.
2) The portion of merchants performing deliveries in which the e-fulfillment
process lasts less than twenty-four hours at worldwide level corresponds
to an almost 46 percent of all the eCommerce merchants; of course this
value changes depending on the geography: it is a bit higher in the US
continent (52 percent), balanced a lower value in the Asian continent (38
percent). The European context, if United Kingdom is excluded, reports an
amount of cases not far from the one of oriental countries (37 percent),
but if adding the British merchants (which provide fast services in the 88
percent of national cases) the overall situation of Europe moves close to
the worldwide average value (reaching a 48 percent). Again United
Kingdom and United States provide the highest quantity of cases of
interest. However splitting these cases into more precise time windows
needed for delivery service provision, we find out that most of really fast
initiatives (i.e. the ones taking less than six hours) do not have a precise
country of belonging as they mainly are few sporadic cases or pilot
projects spread in almost all the global territory; instead interesting to
notice is the fact that while most of initiatives in American and European
countries relate to next day options, the most developed trend in the
Asian geographies is the one of same day deliveries.
3) Some of the insights got in order to answer to this question have been
already reported below. We can add that while for next day deliveries no
significant differences among countries can be found (excepted for the fact
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
18
that Dot Com next day players are in limited number in Asia and in the
US, while they constitute a more significant portion of the European
market), same day deliveries differentiate themselves according to the
country of development: indeed, while United States and Europe see a
limited diffusion of these delivery options, Asian countries led by India
report a huge development of same day services. In addition, while almost
all cases of interest can reach only a local coverage, in the United Kingdom
and in some Asian countries (mainly China and Japan) some merchants
are able to offer also more spread options that reach a more national
coverage.
4) The main sectors interested by fast initiatives in general are Clothing and
Informatics, but we can observe some dedicated trends according to the
country and the delivery timing. In fact, for what regards same day
deliveries, while in the US and Europe overall we can mainly find projects
in commodity sectors of recent development (such as Grocery and Others)
Asia provides a higher amount of examples belonging to sectors such as
Informatics and General, that in the other countries have experienced a
precedent development but then have often remained stuck to the next
day delivery timings. Additionally, some sectors comprehend merchants
that are able to cover higher distances with their fast delivery services
(maybe due also to the peculiarity of items transported), which are
Grocery sector in the UK context and Informatics industry in the Asian
continent.
5) The most delivery services increase their speed, the most we can observe
that retailer leave the recourse to outsourced logistics operators in favor of
internal infrastructures properly developed for providing a more
personalized and controlled service; another interesting trend which
ensures a certain speed of the overall e-fulfillment process avoiding big
investments is represented by the crowd-sourcing model application, but
it remains quite under-developed, with a relevant presence only in the
United States. For what concerns vehicles utilized in transportation, vans
(or refrigerated vans in the case of grocers) are leaving the ground to
lighter and faster means such as bicycles and/or motorbikes, especially
individually owned ones for the crowd-sourcing cases. Few cases of major
interest can be found (one of use of electric bicycles and the other project
with drones), but they only represent an almost irrelevant amount of pilot
and testing projects under development.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
19
1. Introduction In the last decades, the Internet has emerged as a dynamic medium for
channeling transactions between customers and firms in a virtual
marketplace. The growth of the Internet has been phenomenal, and there has
been a corresponding growth in eCommerce market (i.e. the online market
channel). (Cho et al., 2008). The rise of online Internet sales and eCommerce
gave a big boost to retail companies’ sales and gave rise to new and different
business models. According to the “Euromonitor” the global non-store internet
retail sales or internet shopping reported a 14.8% growth from 2007 to 2012, while
the total retail growth was just 0.9% over the same period (Visser et al., 2014).
Estimates reported by the ECommerce Foundation (2015) show that business-to-
consumer (B2C) eCommerce sales worldwide reached $1.9 trillion in 2014,
representing a doubling in sales compared to 2011 (Savelsbergh and Van Woensel,
2016). Mainly following the spread of IT systems such as laptops, tablets, smart
phones and other technologies, today about 45% of all European consumers shop
online (Morganti et al., 2014). The market share of internet shopping will
continue to grow and will substitute traditional shopping. This is more evident by
the fact that by 2020 up to one third of the total shops at shopping centers in
European developed countries like the Netherlands will be closed down due to
the economic crisis and competition from web shops (Visser et al., 2014).
One of the challenging questions that online retailers now face is how to
organize the logistics fulfillment processes during and after order receipt.
Compared with traditional retailers, online retailers are at a disadvantage in that
when a shopper purchases an item from a physical store, the product can
immediately be taken home. However, in the case of online retailers, the
customer must wait for the shipment to arrive (Gong and de Koster, 2008). Jeff
Bezos of Amazon.com notes: “The logistics and the customer service – the
non‐glamorous parts of the business – are the biggest problem with
e‐commerce. A lot of these companies that are coming online spend all their
money and effort building a beautiful website and then they can't get the
stuff to the customer” (US News & World Report, 1999). In line with Bezos’
thought, in a research carried out by European consumers' organizations, it was
found that logistics aspects such as delivery lead times were not met by a
substantial part of the investigated Internet companies (de Koster, 2003). This is
due to the fact that eCommerce requires a new logistics approach in which
small order size, increased daily order volumes, small parcel shipments, and
same‐day shipments are common. Getting goods delivered to a customer's
doorstep in a timely manner is a complicated task and the success of firms in
the eCommerce market depends on the efficiency of their distribution
networks. The effective and efficient movement of goods is critical in the
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
20
eCommerce logistics supply chain (Cho et al., 2008) and this has generated
significant demand for dedicated delivery services to the end customers.
All the aforementioned requirements have resulted in an increasing
fragmentation of shipments into different parts, with a strong attention paid to
the “last-mile” - the final leg in a business-to-consumer delivery service whereby
the consignment is delivered to the recipient, either at the recipient's home or at
a collection point (Ducret R.,2014) and a tremendous innovation in how this last-
mile delivery takes place (Morganti et al., 2014). Today, algorithm-driven delivery
models and analytics enable urban customers to get products delivered faster,
more flexibly, and sometimes less expensively than in the past. Options will
continue to proliferate in the future, with innovative delivery vehicles such as
drones, robots, and driverless vehicles, reducing or perhaps eliminating someday
the need for delivery personnel (Lee et al., 2016). This sector is also seeing the
diffusion of alternative pickup and delivery options (e.g., locker-boxes and parcel
shops) and speed will be the main push in this evolution (Hausmann et al., 2014).
There is an increasing requirement for punctuality and efficiency of express
delivery services. Due to the fact that all customers may have different time
schedules, it is especially important for an express company to deliver goods
punctually as customers expect. At the same time, the express companies
certainly hope to minimize the total travel time for a courier. Therefore, a courier
is facing a though problem and he needs to design the task schedule reasonably
at the beginning of a day’s work, which should not only satisfy all the customers’
appointment times but also make the total time minimized (Sun et al., 2016).
Customers tend to order more frequently, in smaller quantities, and they require
customized services. Companies tend to accept late orders while still
needing to provide rapid and timely delivery within tight time windows (thus the
time available for single preparation activities, such as order picking, is shorter).
In general, lead times are under pressure (Gong and de Koster, 2008). In addition,
the consumer is allowed more and more to take part in defining the e-logistics
that suits him/her, in terms of price, quality, time, green and/or fair practices.
That is, the “logsumer” has more and more power to dictate how the last-mile
needs to be organized (Savelsbergh and Van Woensel, 2016). Now that
eCommerce catches on as a favorable way of making purchases, customers have
increased the pressure they put on retailers and merchants to rapidly supply
products. In such a market, filling orders within a 24 hours time window has
become a standard since some years in many industries, including the
pharmaceutical, food and beverage, office supply and furniture industries
(Gagliardi et al., 2008). Nevertheless, consumers are demanding even more
convenience when delivery is concerned. They want to have multiple delivery options
to choose from, and to receive their products as fast as possible. Once consumers have
experienced a superior service level, they are usually reluctant to return to the
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
21
previous inferior level. Few people would be willing to wait four days for a digital
camera they have ordered online if they can get Amazon to deliver it the next day
(assuming both options are free). Judging from recent survey results, younger
generations (e.g., “millennial”), people living in small households, those working long
hours and consumers with higher incomes are among those particularly willing to pay
for more convenience and speed (Hausmann et al., 2014).
Next day or two-days delivery is currently the industry standard in all developed
countries, but the next evolutionary step is affordable same day delivery. With same
day delivery, orders are delivered within a few hours after purchasing them, or in a
chosen time window on the same day. The Senior Vice President of a logistics
company stated that: “Same day delivery is a game changer because it combines
the immediate product availability of retail with the convenience of ordering
from home” (Hausmann et al., 2014). In recent years, many e-tailers have started
to offer their customers a same day delivery option, sometimes even going down
to 1-hour or 2-hour delivery options (see, e.g., Amazon Prime in selected US
cities) (Savelsbergh and Van Woensel, 2016). Since many online purchases are
impulse buys and, as customers can change their minds and legally cancel the
order within a certain time horizon, a fast response is critical, next day delivery is
no longer enough and different retailers (e.g. the Datch operators Centraal
Boeekhuis, Wehkamp and Albert) had to put in place same day delivery services
in order to stay competitive. Additionally, often the customer specifies a certain
time window for delivery and retailers use different pricing schemes according to
different windows (Gong and de Koster, 2008). As groundbreaking as the
emergence of leading online retailers was in the 1990’s, the impending disruption
that will result from same day delivery will be greater. Same day delivery, if
executed correctly, can provide expansive options for consumers and brands
hoping to grow their business. While critics may see same day delivery as a
downfall for smaller retailers, it can potentially offer competitive advantage for
businesses of all sizes. The logistics required for making same day delivery a
reality are daunting. Supply chain, delivery, customer support, advanced
eCommerce software and warehouse facilities are all crucial to make the new
tactic a reality (Sareen, 2013). Same day delivery has the potential to fundamentally
change the way we shop. It integrates the convenience of online retail with the
immediacy of bricks-and-mortar stores. In recent years an increasing number of
companies have started piloting and operating new models of same day delivery,
including incumbent logistics providers such as DHL, DPD, FedEx, and UPS.
Demand is expected to increase significantly given the compelling value proposition
of same day delivery for consumers because consumers clearly attach a value to it.
The availability of same day delivery is actually expected to further support
eCommerce adoption and drive the online sales of product categories not yet bought
online on a large scale (such as groceries) (Hausmann et al., 2014).
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
22
2. Literature review Coherently with the above premises, the present literature review aims to analyze and
categorize the articles on fast delivery options in B2C eCommerce from an up-to-date
perspective, including more recent contributions to the topic. The objective of this
chapter is twofold: first, to classify researches on this topic made by practitioners and
academics and second, to identify gaps in the research in order to propose directions
for future studies.
2.1 Methodology
2.1.1 Scope of the analysis
This review concerns the examination of the literature related to business-to-
consumer eCommerce with a particular focus on fast deliveries. More specifically,
the viewpoint is that of retailers and merchants which operate in such a fast
delivery context, in order to understand how they decide to organize and conduct
their activities in order to be able to meet customers’ expectations. The main
activities which are investigated are picking after order receipt and delivery of the
goods to the end customer, with a particular attention to the last “leg” of the
delivery process, called “last-mile”. Furthermore, for what concerns order lead
time, not only articles about same day or even faster timings (e.g. about a few
hours) are taken into consideration, but also literature on deliveries made in 24
hours or more, if they are considered to significantly contribute to the topic of
operations’ optimization and activities’ time minimization.
2.1.2 Selection process
First, we established the classification context used to categorize the
material (i.e. logistics management of fast deliveries in the eCommerce
industry);
then the unit of analysis was identified as a single scientific paper or a
white paper published on an international journal;
we consequently conducted a search by keywords using library databases
(e.g. Science Direct, Scopus, Emerald Insights, Google Scholar, etc.). This
search has been carried out using keywords and strings (e.g. “fast picking
eCommerce”, “last-mile delivery”, “same day delivery”, “fast logistics
eCommerce”, “next day delivery”, etc.) and their combinations, that have
been sought in the abstract, title and main body of the scientific papers. In
order to avoid the omission of other potentially significant papers, the
majority of the contributions were also cross-referenced. This method
allowed to analyze the main logistics and transportation journals, as well
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
23
as journals about environment, information systems and computer
science, social and behavioral sciences (e.g. International Journal of
Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, International Journal of
Production Research, International Journal of Production Economics,
International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications, Journal of
Operations Management, Logistics Information Management,
Transportation Research Method, Transportation Science, European
Journal of Operational Research, Business and Information Systems
Engineering, Industrial Management and Data Systems, Information
Technology Journal, Production Planning and Control, Mathematical
Problems in Engineering, Studies in Computational Intelligence, etc.). In
this way, it was possible to assure adequate coverage of the actual body of
research in the field;
we first selected all the papers that in some way dealt with picking and
delivery activities’ management in the context of eCommerce, in order to
collect as many contributions as possible. Then, from this wide base, only
the papers specifically focused on activities’ optimization in terms of order
cycle time minimization and/or provision of a fast delivery offer to
customers where deeply analyzed. As such, the subset of contributions
lastly selected and considered for an in-depth investigation was made of 52
papers published from 2001 to 2017. The number of publications reviewed
in this study can be considered adequate given the fact that this topic has
been particularly developed in the last few years, so it is quite recent and it
is not easy to find many significant contributions on this field;
at this point, the literature was analyzed and categorized. During this
stage, a two-dimensional approach was chosen in order to provide a clear
classification of the examined papers.
2.1.3 Review method
For the purpose of this review, the selected contributions were classified
based on: their main characteristics (i.e. year of publication, journal title and
type, countries addressed), the research methods adopted, and the content area.
All of the papers were categorized according to these review criteria, in order to
identify patterns suggesting possible gaps and themes of interest for future
contributions (Perego et al., 2011; Mangiaracina et al., 2015).
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
24
2.2 Summary of review and discussion
Table I, based on Natarajarathinam et al. (2009), summarizes the main
attributes of each paper. According to Perego et al. (2011), the papers are listed in
chronological order to show the temporal evolution of the issue of fast response
to customers related to B2C eCommerce.
2.2.1 Main characteristics of the papers examined
Table 96 - main characteristics of the examined papers
1 First author’s country
S. no.
Author (year)
Country1 Journal Title Research
method
1 Lee and Whang (2001)
USA MIT sloane management review
Winning the last mile of eCommerce
Literature review
2 Punakivi et al. (2001)
Finland International journal of physical distribution and logistics management
Solving the last mile issue: reception box or delivery box?
Simulation
3 Kamarainen et al. (2001)
Finland International journal of physical distribution and logistics management
The reception box impact on home delivery efficiency in the e-grocery business
Simulation
4 de Koster (2002)
Netherlands International journal of physical distribution and logistics management
Distribution structures for food home shopping
Analytical model
5 Delaney-Klinger et al. (2003)
USA TQM magazine The return of online grocery shopping: a comparative analysis of Webvan and Tesco’s operational methods
Case study
6 Tarn et al. (2003)
USA Logistics information management
E-fulfillment: the strategy and operational requirements
Simulation
7 de Koster (2003)
Netherlands IEEE transactions on engineering management
Distribution strategies for online retailers
Survey
8 Mitrovic-Minic and Laporte (2004)
Canada Transportation research part B: methodologies
Waiting strategies for the dynamic pickup and delivery problem with time windows
Analytical model
9 Lasserre (2004)
Canada Journal of transport geography
Logistics and the internet: transportation and location issues are crucial in the logistics chain
Analytical model
10 Boyer and Hult (2005)
USA Journal of operations management
Extending the supply chain: integrating operations and marketing in the online grocery industry
Survey
11 Lunce et al. (2006)
USA Industrial management and data system
Success and failure of pure-play organizations: Webvan versus Peapod, a comparative analysis
Case study
12 Scott and Scott (2008)
USA Proceedings of the annual Hawaii
Online grocery order fulfillment tradeoffs
Conceptual framework
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
25
international conference on system sciences
13 Gagliardi et al. (2008)
Canada International journal of production economics
Space allocation and stock replenishment synchronization in a distribution center
Case study
14 Cho et al. (2008)
USA International journal of physical distribution and logistics management
Logistics capability, logistics outsourcing and firm performance in an eCommerce market
Survey
15 Gong and de Koster (2008)
Netherlands IIE transactions A polling-based dynamic order picking system for online retailers
Simulation
16 Song et al. (2009)
UK Transportation research method
Addressing the last mile problem: transport impacts of collection and delivery points
Case study
17 Ghiani et al. (2009)
Italy Transportation research part E: logistics and transportation review
Anticipatory algorithms for same day courier dispatching
Analytical model
18 Hu and Chang (2009)
China Journal of the Chinese institute of industrial engineers
An innovative logistics model for multi-channel retailing
Analytical model
19 Hu and Chang (2010)
China International journal of advanced manufacturing technology
An innovative automated storage and retrieval system for B2C eCommerce logistics
Analytical model
20 Agatz et al. (2011)
Netherlands Transportation science
Time slot management in attended home delivery
Analytical model
21 Runciman (2011)
UK ITNOW: Oxford journals
Do IT yourself? Case study
22 Durand and Gonzalez-Feliu (2012)
France Procedia – social and behavioral sciences
Urban logistics and e-grocery: have proximity delivery services a positive impact on shopping trips?
Simulation
23 Xiao et al. (2013)
China Information technology journal
B2C eCommerce vehicle delivery model and simulation
Simulation
24 Vanelslander et al. (2013)
Belgium International journal of logistics research and applications
Commonly used eCommerce supply chains for fast moving consumer goods: comparison and suggestions for improvement
Conceptual framework
25 Sareen (2013) USA Wired Once refined, same day delivery will be commonplace
Conceptual framework
26 Morganti et al. (2014)
France Transportation research procedia
The impact of eCommerce on final deliveries: alternative parcel delivery services in France and Germany
Case study
27 Morganti et al. (2014)
France Research in transportation business and management
Final deliveries for online shopping: the deployment of pickup point networks in urban and suburban areas
Case study
28 Wang et al. (2014)
China Mathematical problems in engineering
How to choose “last mile” delivery modes for e-fulfillment
Simulation
29 Gruber et al. Germany Research in A new vehicle for urban Simulation
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
26
(2014) transportation business and management
freight? An ex-ante evaluation of electric cargo bikes in courier services
30 Cleophas and Ehmke (2014)
Germany Business and information systems engineering
When are deliveries profitable?: considering order value and transport capacity in demand fulfillment for last-mile deliveries in metropolitan areas
Case study
31 Ehmke and Campbell (2014)
USA European journal of operational research
Customer acceptance mechanisms for home deliveries in metropolitan areas
Simulation
32 Visser et al. (2014)
Netherlands Procedia – social and behavioral sciences
Home delivery and the impacts on urban freight transport: a review
Literature review
33 Ducret (2014) France Research in transportation business and management
Parcel deliveries and urban logistics: changes and challenges in the courier express and parcel sector in Europe – the French case
Case study
34 Hausmann et al. (2014)
Germany McKinsey & company Same day delivery: the next evolutionary step in parcel logistics
Conceptual framework
35 Xu et al. (2014)
China Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE 18th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design, CSCWD 2014
Logistics scheduling based on cloud business workflows
Analytical model
36 Kumagai (2014)
USA IEEE spectrum A day in the life of digi-key Case study
37 Wang and Xiao (2015)
China Journal of transport geography
Co-evolution between etailing and parcel express industry and its geographical imprints: The case of China
Conceptual framework
38 Koster et al. (2015)
Germany Transportation research procedia
Cooperative traffic control management for city logistic routing
Conceptual framework
39 Li et al. (2015)
China Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Towards fast and accurate solutions to vehicle routing in a large-scale and dynamic environment
Analytical model
40 Zu and Sun (2015)
China Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Optimization of order picking work flow at the eCommerce logistics centers
Conceptual framework
41 Tsamis et al. (2015)
UK Studies in Computational Intelligence
Adaptive storage location assignment for warehouses using intelligent products
Simulation
42 Wang et al. (2016)
China Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review
Towards enhancing the last-mile delivery: An effective crowd-tasking model with scalable solutions
Analytical model
43 Sun et al. (2016)
China Proceedings - 2016 IEEE International Conference on Web Services, ICWS 2016
A personalized service for scheduling express delivery using courier trajectories
Analytical model
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
27
The 52 papers examined where published in 39 different journals, with a mean
value of about 1.3 contributions per journal. We found different types of journals,
i.e. engineering operations and activity management journals (28 percent),
logistics and transportation journals (20 percent), computer and system sciences
journals (20 percent), information and communication technologies journals(9
percent), business
management, accounting and consulting journals (9 percent), applied
mathematics journals (7 percent), social and behavioral sciences journals (5
percent) and environmental sciences journals (2 percent).
Focusing on the year of publication, we can see a pretty stable trend with one,
two or at maximum three papers published each year from 2001 (with the
exception of 2007 in which there were no contributions to consider); but year
2014 brought a dramatic change: in fact, the big majority of the papers, almost 70
percent, were published from that year on. The reasons that justify this pattern
might be explained as follows. On the one hand, since the emergence of the
Internet as a powerful medium to channel customers and firms in a virtual
marketplace in the last 1990s, there has been a continuous, although moderate,
interest in the optimization of the activities in the B2C eCommerce. The whole
44 Savelsbergh and Van Woensel (2016)
USA Transportation Science
City logistics: Challenges and opportunities
Literature review
45 Schrotenboer et al. (2016)
Netherlands International Journal of Production Research
Order picker routing with product returns and interaction delays
Analytical model
46 Liu et al. (2016)
China Engineering Optimization
A capacitated vehicle routing problem with order available time in eCommerce industry
Analytical model
47 Harrington et al. (2016)
UK Production Planning and Control
Identifying design criteria for urban system last-mile solutions -A multi-stakeholder perspective
Conceptual framework
48 Saskia et al. (2016)
Germany Transportation research Procedia
Innovations in e-grocery and Logistics Solutions for Cities
Case study
49 Van Duin et al. (2016)
Netherlands Transportation research Procedia
Improving Home Delivery Efficiency by Using Principles of Address Intelligence for B2C Deliveries
Conceptual framework
50 Yu et al. (2016)
China Procedia CIRP ECommerce Logistics in Supply Chain Management: Practice Perspective
Literature review
51 Lee et al. (2016)
USA Stanford business school
Technological disruption and innovation in last-mile delivery
Conceptual framework
52 Li et al. (2017)
China International Journal of Production Research
Joint optimisation of order batching and picker routing in the online retailer’s warehouse in China
Analytical model
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
28
supply chain have been investigated: algorithms have been developed in order to
optimize activities inside the firms’ warehouses/plants (addressing stock
allocation, stock replenishment and order picking) but also outside plants’ walls
(delivery scheduling and courier routing, with a particular attention to the last-
mile of the delivery process); business models of different operators’ have been
analyzed and compared, to understand which ones were better able to answer to
more and more challenging customers’ needs, especially in terms of speed; the
daily schedule of couriers operating for online merchants has been addressed in
order to optimize routes, minimize delivery times and maximize the number of
points touched in one tour; additionally, new solutions have been studied to
improve the efficiency of home deliveries. But the real revolution towards same
day or faster delivery services has started in 2014 with the first ground-breaking
pilot projects of Amazon: they have pushed a lot of other online retailers or
logistics companies to invest in such projects, leading a wave in which everybody
was trying to keep the pace and follow this new trend in order to stay competitive
in the market.
Finally, looking at the countries addressed, the number of papers in which the
first author is from China is 13 (corresponding to 25 percent), followed by 12
contributions of researchers from USA (i.e. 23 percent) and 7 contributions of
researchers from the Netherlands (i.e. 13 percent). Then other papers were
written by authors from Germany (five), France (four), UK (four), Canada (three),
Finland (two), Belgium (one) and Italy (one). This result is consistent with the
current fast growing adoption of eCommerce in China, which represents the
most promising emerging market, and the leading position kept by USA in this
industry for years. Interesting also to notice the relevance of contributions from
Netherlands, Germany, France and UK as most innovative and developed
European countries in this field.
2.2.2 Research methods used
Contributions were also classified on the basis of their research methodology.
Categories used for this classification belong to a study by Meixell and Norbis
(2008) who identified seven research methods: analytical/mathematical models,
conceptual models or frameworks, case studies, interviews, surveys, simulations
and others.
As shown in Table I, many papers present analytical or mathematical models
(14), but there are also many based on case studies (11) or presenting conceptual
models and frameworks (10) or simulations (10). For what concerns the remaining
methodologies, some papers are literature reviews aimed at representing the
state-of-the-art of scientific research on a certain topic in the moment they were
written (4), while some others are based on data collected from surveys (3).
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
29
First, the possibility of finding a link between the research method and the
year of publication was investigated: results show that contributions based on
surveys are the less recent ones and no significant papers following this method
have been written after 2008; on the contrary, writings reporting conceptual
models and frameworks follow the opposite trend, because no contributions were
made before 2008 and the large majority of papers (90 percent) belong to the
years from 2013 on. The first pattern could be explained by the fact that the
practices of fast and same day delivery in B2C eCommerce are quite recent and
not already widespread as customers’ requests; this could make hard the job of
submitting surveys and collecting a so relevant number of responses allowing to
draw significant and generally valid conclusions. Instead, the second trend of
conceptual frameworks may be justified by the interest of researchers in
developing theoretical models with a wide-ranging relevance, so that they could
be considered valuable and be studied and applied by a lot of different operators
that want to be competitive.
Then, a possible connection between the type of research method and the
theme addressed was investigated. A specific relationship could not be identified,
but some prevailing themes were found according to the research method. For
example, empirical papers (i.e. case studies or surveys) often address the theme
of supply chain structure, analyzing the whole operations’ chain of one (e.g.
Kumagai J., 2014), two (e.g. Delaney-Klinger K. et al., 2003; Lunce S.E. et al., 2006)
or more firms’ realities (de Koster R., 2003; Boyer K.K. and Hult G.T.M., 2005).
For what concerns case studies alone, they present also the theme of last-mile
delivery in the 36 percent of papers (e.g. Song R. et al., 2009; Runciman B., 2011;
Morganti E. et al., 2014; Cleophas C. and Ehmke J.F., 2014); the interest is mainly
got by failed first-time home deliveries and the study of cases in which alternative
delivery methods are applied, such as pickup points and automatic lockers, in
order to reduce the risk of failure. Analytical and mathematical models in almost
65 percent of cases deal with the theme of delivery scheduling and routing
arrangement for couriers. Some models and algorithms are developed in order to
solve dynamic vehicle dispatching or vehicle routing problem, to minimize time
and cost spent for delivery and maximize the number of touch-points in one
courier’s tour (e.g. Ghiani G. et al., 2009; Agatz N. et al., 2011; Sun Y. et al., 2016);
in some cases these algorithms are also time dependent (i.e. a certain time
window is set as a constraint and specifies the order available time) (e.g. Xu R. et
al., 2014; Li Y. et al., 2015;; Liu L. et al., 2016), while in other cases they focus on
the implementation of a specific delivery technology, such as air cargo (e.g.
Lasserre F., 2004). Then we find some models aimed at solving dynamic pickup
problems to optimize pickers’ activity for orders’ preparation (e.g. Schrotenboer
A.H. et al., 2016); finally, some other papers address both pickup and delivery
issues (e.g. Mitrovic-Minic S., Laporte G., 2004). Interesting to notice the
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
30
significant contribution made by Chinese authors in this field of mathematical
modeling (57 percent of the total). Dealing with simulations, a notable portion
(40 percent) of papers addresses the theme of last-mile delivery: most of them
simulate scenarios in which alternative technologies to attended home delivery
are exploited (i.e. reception box, delivery box and collection-and-delivery points)
in order to compare their performance in terms of cost and service levels (e.g.
Punakivi M. et al., 2001; Kamarainen V. et al., 2001; Wang X. et al., 2014); some
others compare performances of different transportation means, e.g. assessing
the outstanding value of electric and traditional bikes (e.g. Gruber J. et al., 2014).
In conclusion, literature reviews in 75 percent of cases are based on the state-of-
the-art analysis of trends in the couriers and logistics operators’ industry, often
grouped by continent or nation, in order to keep the pace with the last practices
and get useful insights about future possible developments (e.g. Visser J. et al.,
2014; Savelsbergh M. and Van Woensel T., 2016; Yu Y. et al., 2016).
2.3 Discussion of themes arising from the review
2.3.1 Research area
Table 97 - Area of research of papers examined
Areas Papers
Courier delivery scheduling & routing
Mitrovic-Minic and Laporte (2004) Xu et al. (2014)
Lasserre (2004) Koster et al. (2015)
Ghiani et al. (2009) Li et al. (2015)
Agatz et al. (2011) Sun et al. (2016)
Xiao et al. (2013) Schrotenboer et al. (2016)
Cleophas and Ehmke (2014) Liu et al. (2016)
Ehmke and Campbell (2014) Van Duin et al. (2016)
Couriers and logistics operators trends
Visser et al. (2014) Wang and Xiao (2015)
Ducret (2014) Savelsbergh and Van Woensel (2016)
Hausmann et al. (2014) Yu et al. (2016)
Distribution centers structure and cost
de Koster (2002) Saskia et al. (2016)
Last-mile delivery Lee and Whang (2001) Morganti et al. (2014)
Punakivi et al. (2001) Wang et al. (2014)
Kamarainen et al. (2001) Gruber et al. (2014)
Song et al. (2009) Wang et al. (2016)
Runciman (2011) Harrington et al. (2016)
Morganti et al. (2014) Lee et al. (2016)
Operations performance assessment
Cho et al. (2008) Sareen (2013)
Picking Gong and de Koster (2008) Zu and Sun (2015)
Hu and Chang (2010) Li et al. (2017)
Storage Tsamis et al. (2015)
Storage & picking Gagliardi et al. (2008) Hu and Chang (2009)
Supply chain structure Delaney-Klinger et al. (2003) Scott and Scott (2008)
Tarn et al. (2003) Durand and Gonzalez-Feliu (2012)
de Koster (2003) Vanelslander et al. (2013)
Boyer and Hult (2005) Kumagai (2014)
Lunce et al. (2006)
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
31
The papers were also analyzed on the basis of their content (i.e. the issues
they tackle). By looking only at the area of research, we can see that 14 of them
(corresponding to the 27 percent) deal with the theme of delivery scheduling &
routing arrangement in order to optimize couriers’ daily job; as previously stated,
most of them (64 percent) are analytical or mathematical models, but we find
also some conceptual models and some simulations. Their aims are multiple:
finding the best delivery technology able to squeeze at maximum delivery time
(e.g. Lasserre F., 2004); managing the fleet in real-time, without recurring to an a-
priori data preparation phase, to solve problems of optimization of vehicles’ load
(i.e. have vehicles as fully-loaded as possible), assign requests and state routings
for each vehicle (e.g. Mitrovic-Minic S. and Laporte G., 2004; Ghiani G. et al.,
2009; Xiao H. et al., 2013; Cleophas C. and Ehmke J.F., 2014; Ehmke J.F. and
Campbell A.M., 2014; Xu R. et al., 2014; Li Y. et al., 2015; Sun Y. et al., 2016; Liu L.
et al., 2016); selecting the time slots to be assigned to each zip code delivery area
in order to reach cost-effectiveness while, at the same time, keeping an adequate
service performance for customers (e.g. Agatz N. et al., 2011); studying solutions
of traffic control management (i.e. TM) allowing courier express and parcel
services (i.e. CEP) to integrate management of their last mile deliveries with city
traffic conditions (e.g. Koster F. et al., 2015); developing routing decisions for
pickers inside the warehouse, for both activities of simultaneous picking of
ordered products and putting away of returned items and considering also
interactions among pickers working in the same time (e.g. Schrotenboer et al.,
2016); finally, investigating modeling techniques that apply address intelligence
in order to use historical delivery data for identifying and predicting potential
improvements in the choice of zip code delivery areas (e.g. van Duin J.H.R. et al.,
2016).
Then, 12 papers (corresponding to the 23 percent of the total) face different
aspects of last-mile delivery; the research methods they present are numerous,
but case studies and simulations constitute a relevant portion. In many of them,
the issue of unattended and failed first-time home delivery is tackled and
advantages and disadvantages of alternative network designs (such as the
introduction of the reception box, the delivery box, consolidation centers, pickup
points, automatic lockers or the recourse to a crowd-tasking model with a pool of
citizen workers who complete the delivery) are analyzed in order to find a way to
minimize the cost of failure (i.e. cost of repeated delivery for the carrier and/or
cost of customer trips to retrieve the item from depots) (e.g. Punakivi M. et al.,
2001; Kamarainen et al., 2001; Song R. et al., 2009; Morganti E. et al., 2014; Wang
X. et al., 2014; Harrington T.S. et al., 2016; Wang Y. et al., 2016). In other
contributions, the theme of optimization of the last-mile delivery (i.e. pursuing
cost and time reduction while keeping a high service level) is addressed by
looking at the means of transportation and assessing the convenience of
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
32
alternative means that are already in use nowadays and/or which will encounter a
widespread diffusion in the future; examples of these are bikes and electric cargo
bikes, drones, robots and driverless vehicles (e.g. Gruber J. et al., 2014; Lee H.L. et
al., 2016). In the end, one paper (Runciman B., 2011) is focused on analyzing the
positive impact, in terms of last-mile delivery time reduction, of a cloud
infrastructure that operates as a platform to integrate the API web service with
eCommerce, point of sales, mobile and telephone channels of different retailers;
this tool is analyzed in the case of a specific operator (i.e. Shutl) which is now
able to serve its customers within a very short time window.
Moving on with the classification, we can find 9 papers out of the total 52 (so,
the 17 percent of them) dealing with the theme of supply chain structure, taking a
look at the operations strategy and/or the business model applied by one or more
operators along the whole chain. The majority of contributions is made of
frameworks or simulations which propose general logistics models and discuss
typical e-fulfillment strategies, without referring to real cases (e.g. Tarn J.M. et
al., 2003; Scott J.E. and Scott C.H., 2008; Durand B. and Gonzalez-Feliu J., 2012);
one of them analyzes the supply chain not only in terms of activities’
management and operations, but its main aim is to find out the distribution of
logistics costs along the chain (Vanelslander T. et al., 2013). Some papers take
data from case studies or surveys of online retailers in order to investigate
strategies of these different types of retailers; the focus is especially on the choice
of where to fulfill customer orders (from existing stores or dedicated warehouses
and their location) and the choice of the delivery method (direct to the
customer's home/office or indirect via customer pickup or outsourcing to third-
party logistics provider) and delivery area (e.g. de Koster R., 2003; Boyer K.K. and
Hult G.T.M., 2005). In addition, some other papers focus on a fewer number of
cases having so a comparison between two real models implemented by
companies , one of success and one of failure, in order to attempt to identify the
critical success factors that contributed to their different performances; the
analysis does not stop at a level of activities’ strategic management and logistics
infrastructure, but looks also at the match between operations and marketing
strategies (e.g. Delaney Klinger K. et al., 2003; Lunce S.E. et al., 2006). Finally, one
paper provides an in-depth look at operations of a single company working as an
online electronic components’ distributor (Kumagai J., 2014).
On the contrary, 7 papers (i.e. the 13 percent) do not make a global overview
of the whole chain models, but concentrate on the study of the internal activities
of storage and picking inside distribution centers. Most of them (4 out of 7)
address the picking activity: they propose algorithms and models for order
picking optimization, considering both order batching and picker routing, in
order to reduce the operational cost of an eCommerce logistics center and
enhance the order picking operation management level (e.g. Zu Q. and Sun B.,
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
33
2015; Li J. et al., 2017) or they simulate the introduction of new technologies, such
as informative Dynamic Picking System (DPS) or Automated Storage/Retrieval
System (AS/RS), comparing their performances to the ones of traditional manual
systems (e.g. Gong Y. and De Koster R., 2008; Hu K.Y. and Chang T.S., 2010). One
paper focuses only on the storage activity and in particular aims to identify a
potential solution by developing a distributed adaptive strategy for storage
location assignment problem (Tsamis L. et al., 2015). The last two articles deal
with both storage and picking activities, so analyzing in the same time product
location and replenishment strategy in a distribution center; one is directed to
the case of a pick-to-belt system (Gagliardi J.P. et al., 2008), the other is applied
to the case of an automated multi-floor distribution center (AMDC) adopting a
picker-to-part model (Hu K.Y. and Chang T.S., 2009).
We have then 6 papers (corresponding to 12 percent of the total) addressing
the theme of couriers’ and logistics operators’ trends: the objective is the one of
presenting the state-of-the-art of eCommerce logistics in supply chain
management from a view of practice perspective. These contributions basically
consist of literature reviews (e.g. Visser J. et al., 2014; Ducret R., 2014; Savelsbergh
M. and Van Woensel T., 2016; Yu Y. et al., 2016) and conceptual frameworks (e.g.
Hausmann L. et al., 2014; Wang J.J. and Xiao Z., 2015) in order to analyze CEP (i.e.
Courier, Express and Parcel) sector’s changes and drivers, reviewing current and
anticipated challenges and providing opportunities and future perspectives. Some
of these papers also put an eye on city logistics, looking at impacts of eCommerce
on transportation within urban areas.
Two papers deal only with the distribution activity: they look at the typical
distribution structure (made of stores and different warehouses’ types) employed
by companies, in order to find a link among the distribution infrastructure, the
companies’ operational complexity and their web-based orientation and provide
comparisons of different alternatives (de Koster R., 2002; Saskia S. et al., 2016).
Lastly, two papers have the objective of carrying out a performance
assessment of e-operations: logistics capabilities of different operators are studied
in order to assess their impact on firms’ performances in the eCommerce industry
(Cho J.J.K. et al., 2008) and key factors are investigated to assess success or failure
of a specific delivery strategy (Sareen H., 2013 which lists key variables affecting
the development of a good same day delivery strategy).
2.3.2 First matrix classification: speed of delivery – type of activity
After the content analysis, a two-dimensional approach was used to provide a
clear classification of the articles examined. The two axes considered for the
categorization are: first, the speed of the delivery process which can be also
described as the order cycle time (i.e. the time lag between order reception and
product delivery to the final customer); second, the type of activity and/or
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
34
Table 98 – first classification: addressed activities vs. speed of delivery
Picking Delivery Picking & delivery
Fast Gong and de Koster (2008)
Runciman (2011); Morganti et al. (2014); Ehmke and Campbell (2014); Ducret (2014); Wang et al. (2016)
Yu et al. (2016)
same day Mitrovic-Minic and Laporte (2004); Ghiani et al. (2009); Visser et al. (2014); Koster et al. (2015); Savelsbergh and Van Woensel (2016); Lee et al. (2016)
Sareen (2013); Hausmann et al. (2014); Kumagai (2014)
24 hours Gagliardi et al. (2008) Punakivi et al. (2001); Kamarainen et al. (2001); Morganti et al. (2014); Wang et al. (2014); Sun et al. (2016)
Tarn et al. (2003); Scott and Scott (2008)
Others de Koster (2002); Hu and Chang (2009); Hu and Chang (2010); Zu and Sun (2015); Tsamis et al. (2015); Schrotenboer et al. (2016); Li et al. (2017)
Lee and Whang (2001); Lasserre (2004); Cho et al. (2008); Song et al. (2009); Agatz et al. (2011); Xiao et al. (2013); Gruber et al. (2014); Xu et al. (2014); Wang and Xiao (2015); Li et al. (2015); Liu et al. (2016); Harrington et al. (2016); Saskia et al. (2016); van Duin et al. (2016)
Delaney-Klinger et al. (2003); de Koster (2003); Boyer and Hult (2005); Lunce et al. (2006); Durand and Gonzalez-Feliu (2012); Vanelslander et al. (2013); Cleophas and Ehmke (2014)
Figure 1 - two-dimensional classification along with research method
: simulation : case study
: conceptual framework : analytical model
: literature review : survey
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
35
activities addressed in the paper. For what concerns the second variable, the
focus of contributions was distinguished among “picking only”, “delivery only” or
“picking and delivery”; since the scope of our work is to analyze how operations
are managed and carried out in the eCommerce industry, all these three
categories were of same interest for our purpose. Addressing instead the first axis,
a distinction was made among four different speed categories, presented in
increasing order of time required for delivery: “fast”, “same day”, “24 hours” and
“others”; in this case, the attention paid to papers is greater when the order cycle
time decreases, due to the fact that the goal of the work is on studying the trend
of fastening eCommerce deliveries; this is why contributions categorized as
“others” were addressed with less interest than ones labeled as “fast” or “same
day”.
Before going on with the classification, it could be useful to provide a sort of
definition for each of these speeds. Dealing with “fast” deliveries, it is not possible
to define them in a unique way, since different authors provide very different
timings. Gong Y. and de Koster R. (2008) speak about some online retailers
adopting personalized material flows in order to achieve a fast response to gain
competitive advantage and the examples they show are of orders served in 45
minutes (in the case of the online Finnish retailer Nettymarket) or in 2 hours (for
the Chinese retailer China online shopping, operating in the consumer
electronics industry). Differently, Ducret R. (2014) addresses this theme by
writing about express companies, among which he lists providers operating in 90
minutes (such as DPD in Germany and Royal Mail in UK) but also same-hour
delivery developers as the UK firm Shutl or the German Tiramizoo. Another
example is the one of JingDong, the second largest eCommerce company in
China, which among its logistics services offers also a fast one, delivering
products in 3 hours (Yu Y. et al., 2016). On the contrary, Mitrovic-Minic S. and
Laporte G. (2004) do not provide real cases, but they present a conceptual model
of a system using a neural network as learning module and able to operate all the
activities from order receipt in 2 hours, with 30 minutes dedicated to picking and
90 minutes to delivery. Also Savelsbergh M. and Van Woensel T. (2016) write
about 1-hour and 2 hours delivery options, as the case of Amazon Prime in
selected US cities. Finally, moving to more recent technologies, we can report
pilot projects by Google and Amazon Prime Air testing delivery with drones in
less than 30 minutes (in particular, Google announced of being able to fully start
the drone delivery service this year 2017); we also have delivery robots, which
could be used for delivering small packages, groceries, laundry, pizza, and more,
able to make deliveries within 5 to 30 minutes, addressing so customers’ need for
speedy services (e.g. SideWalk company started tests of its robot in Lithuania in
2015, aiming at expanding soon to Germany and Denmark, for e-food platforms,
restaurants, cafes and flower shops and was able to offer a service referred to as
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
36
“instant city delivery” working in more or less 15 minutes) (Lee H.L. et al., 2016).
So we can conclude that no unique timing is precisely assigned to the term “fast”
delivery, but we can affirm that we are referring to services assuring customers’
reach in less than a few hours (two or maximum three).
Moving to same day services, it was easier to find an exact definition: with
same day delivery, orders can be delivered within a few hours after purchasing them
or at maximum in a chosen time window on the same day. In an interview, the SVP
of a logistics company stated that “same day delivery is a game changer
because it combines the immediate product availability of retail with the
convenience of ordering from home.” (Hausmann L. et al., 2014). Same day
delivery operations have a dynamic nature which makes the situation harder, not only
for what concerns the dynamic vehicle routing, but also because it refers to
dynamic receiving of orders that need to be delivered in a restricted time and
there are few, if any, opportunities to accommodate additional deliveries after a
delivery vehicle has left the depot (because the vehicle would have to return to
the depot to pick up the additional deliveries). In fact, two natural features of
same day delivery have to be considered: (1) all orders have to be delivered by the
end of the day, and (2) all orders have to be delivered within a given period after
receiving the order. So the critical decisions are when to dispatch a vehicle, what
orders the vehicle should serve and in what sequence they should be served.
(Savelsbergh M. and Van Woensel T., 2016). Among the contributions analyzed,
different examples of same day delivery were found: from the Dutch company
Ahold with its Internet home delivery service Albert (Gong Y. and de Koster R.,
2008), to E-bay, Google and Amazon in the United States, soon followed by
national postal service USPS in San Francisco (Ducret R., 2014), again to Amazon
in Japan and the Japanese company Yamato which is able to deliver products to
customers by 8 p.m. for orders received in the morning (Visser J. et al., 2014),
until the most innovative case of UberRUSH, currently available in Chicago, San
Francisco and New York, which implies a massive use of bicycles by couriers or
travels by foot and is able to pose a big threat to giants such as UPS, FedEx and
USPS (Lee H.L. et al., 2016).
It is even easier to define “24 hours” services, which are also referred to as
next day deliveries: they assure the receiving of orders within a 24-hours delivery
window from the moment of order reception by the retailer; so, orders issued by
the customer at a certain time one day are received by him/herself before the
same time the following day. Some examples found in the papers are provided by
Centraal Boekhuis warehouse, which distributes the orders of Dutch BOL.com
and Wehkamp, the largest online retailer in the Netherlands, within a 24-hour
delivery window. (Gong Y. and de Koster R., 2008).
Lastly, in the category “others” we collected all the cases in which order cycle
times are going beyond the next day delivery limit, usually from two days on.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
37
Let’s have a look now at the classification, deeply describing the two axes and
then also observing if a potential connection could be found among these two
variables and the papers’ research method used.
(1) Speed of the delivery process. As previously mentioned, based on the speed at
which the whole process is performed, from order reception to product
delivery, we can identify four different categories: fast delivery, same day
delivery, 24 hours delivery and others.
Fast delivery is the least tackled theme in literature, being it the most
recent research field, it has not been fully addressed yet: in fact, only 7 out of
the total 52 papers analyzed concern this topic. Looking first at the research
method, we can notice a balanced presence of case studies on the one hand (3
out of 7) and simulations/analytical frameworks on the other (overall 3 out of
7 papers): this result is the proof of the fact that some authors are starting to
develop theoretical models to understand how this type of delivery could be
arranged in general terms and are also beginning to test and simulate their
frameworks; but, due to the fact that the development of this practice is quite
recent, a significant contribution is also provided by the study of cases of real
companies which have put in place the system, in an attempt to learn from
successful past experiences. Most papers (5 out of 7) deal only with the
delivery activity: we have case studies of companies which have been able to
develop such effective infrastructures for last-mile deliveries to perform
activities in very fast times: for example we can see the cloud platform
implemented by UK company Shutl to aggregate capacity in the same day
courier market, which allows deliveries to be performed in 90 minutes or in a
one-hour time window chosen by the customer (Runciman B., 2011) or the
network of pickup points (PP) which has viewed a widespread diffusion in
France as an alternative to optimize parcel deliveries, making products
accessible for customers’ pickup in few minutes (Morganti E. et al., 2014) or
cases of other city couriers or parcel providers which have become very
interesting in the eyes of online giant retailers to provide city express services
(e.g. German DPD, US Postal Service or UK Royal Mail) (Ducret R., 2014);
then we also have a simulation framework which compares different
acceptance mechanisms applied by couriers to schedule order deliveries with
the aim of being able to accomplish tasks in less than one hour (Ehmke J.F.
and Campbell A.M., 2014) and a paper proposing a crowd-delivery model
which utilizes a large pool of citizens to enhance last-mile delivery, taking as
reference companies which perform fast last-mile delivery such as UberRUSH
(Wang Y. et al.,2016). One paper only addresses the single picking activity,
simulating the application of dynamic polling-based picking and assessing its
benefits in terms of service level (i.e. shorter order throughput times and
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
38
higher on-time service completion ratios) with respect to traditional batch
picking systems; as examples for the simulation, real cases are used of
merchants which need this optimization framework to provide a fast delivery
service (e.g. 45 minutes-service for Dutch Nettymarket and 2 hours-service for
Chinese China online shopping) (Gong Y. and de Koster R., 2008). Finally, the
most recent paper looks for a wider perspective, addressing both picking and
delivery activities and providing a complete review of worldwide
implementations and corresponding models currently implemented by
eCommerce global logistics companies; applied techniques are reviewed so as
to get insights from them and, for what concerns delivery speed, the real case
of Asia-Pacific company JingDong, able to put in place a service of 3 hours
delivery, is provided (Yu Y. et al., 2016).
Few more contributions were found about same day delivery (9 out of 52
papers), but still in a quite scarce number. Looking at the research method,
the majority of them describes conceptual models or frameworks (4 out of 9
papers), then there are a couple of mathematical models, a couple of
literature reviews and just one case study; this phenomenon could be
interpreted as a proof of the fact that, even if it is still a quite recent topic and
the amount of papers is scant, it is less recent than fast delivery issue and few
years more of research have allowed to bring scientific discussion at a higher
level: there are not only case studies of pilot projects or actions implemented
by few ground-breaking players, the topic has had the opportunity of being
further analyzed and conceptualized and contributions have a wider and
more general validity. No papers among these address the only picking
activity, while most of them (6 out of 9) study the delivery activity alone. We
have some models on waiting strategies or anticipation strategies to solve
dynamic vehicle dispatching problems for pickups and deliveries; these
algorithms are expressively related to models of same day couriers
transporting small parcels and are stimulated by the recent advances in
information and communication technologies which allow data on courier
locations and customer requests to be obtained and processed in real time
(Mitrovic-Minic S. and Laporte G., 2004; Ghiani G. et al., 2009); another
model refers again to the express couriers and parcel service industry and
looks at the optimization of their travel times, but through the coordination
with traffic control management (TM) systems which report city traffic
conditions (Koster F. et al., 2015). Lastly few other papers review the latest
trends about internet shopping and home deliveries affecting city and last-
mile logistics and among the various challenges and opportunities analyzed,
same day delivery is addressed: its definition and own particular features are
provided, some emerging technologies allowing this service to work always
better and faster are analyzed, together with the business models
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
39
implemented by some key and successful entrants in this field (Visser J. et al.,
2014; Savelsbergh M. and Van Woensel T., 2016; Lee H.L. et al., 2016).
More or less the same number of contributions is about 24 hours delivery
(8 out of 52), so still a moderate presence. More than a half of them report
analytical (1) or conceptual (1) models or simulations of alternative models (4
out of 8), while there are just a couple of case studies; this is an even clearer
evidence of the fact that by moving towards slower and less recent delivery
services, the presence of well structured and conceptualized models becomes
far more relevant than the one of case studies and surveys, meaning that the
body of research has been deeply analyzed and the collection of a significant
amount of cases and data has led to the realization of general models. Just one
paper addresses the picking activity and in particular analyzes different
strategies for product location and replenishment in order to manage storage
and picking activities as most efficiently as possible; these strategies are
compared by using a real case of a distribution center with a pick-to-belt
system for the distribution of snacks and this center manages orders in a 24-
hours time window (Gagliardi J.P. et al., 2008). Most papers (5 out of 8) tackle
the delivery activity and in particular the issue of unattended home deliveries:
different solutions to improve attended delivery efficiency are proposed and
simulated, studying their advantages and disadvantages in terms of
implementation cost for the retailer and service level to the customer; the
alternatives taken into consideration are the reception box and the delivery
box (i.e. insulated box containing the goods which is delivered to the
customer and attached securely in a locking device bolted on the building
wall; the empty box is then collected the day after delivery or later) (Punakivi
M. et al., 2001; Kamarainen V. et al., 2001), collection-and-delivery or pickup
points located in stores (which are also studied in different scenarios with
varying population density) (Wang X. et al., 2014) and networks of automated
lockers (which have seen a significant penetration in France and Germany)
(Morganti E. et al., 2014). Another paper deals with delivery but it presents a
model to personalize the scheduling of express deliveries in the last-mile, in
order to satisfy customers’ appointment time and concurrently minimize the
total travel time (Sun Y. et al., 2016). All the aforementioned contributions
refer to couriers which carry out one day or next day delivery, which can be
considered an express service compared to traditional logistics providers’
services (usually taking between two and five days for shipments), but it is far
away from the faster services which represent the focus of this work. Finally,
two papers take a wider look at the e-fulfillment process, addressing all the
activities along the chain, including both picking and delivery; their aim is the
one of identifying a generally valid model for the design of an eCommerce
fulfillment system, with specific steps to be followed and particular issues and
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
40
tradeoffs to consider (e.g. for what concerns items’ storage, tradeoffs of
productivity, capacity, real estate cost, items’ freshness, etc.) (Tarn J.M. et al.,
2003; Scott J.E. and Scott C.H., 2008).
The last category for what concerns speed of the delivery process is
represented by those papers which are classified as “others” because they
relate to processes taking more than 24 hours. These are the very large
majority of the contributions collected, corresponding to almost the 54
percent of them (28 papers out of the total 52). We can at once notice that
this is the mostly addressed category, the one which has seen the wider
development, even thanks to the fact that deliveries in more than one day
have become a widespread phenomenon since many years. As we could
expect, by looking at the research method we found a significant amount of
analytical and mathematical models (10), conceptual models (5) and modeling
simulations (4); there are also some case studies (5), while less relevant is the
contribution of surveys (3) and literature reviews (1). The reason for this
pattern could be the same we have described for the previous category:
deliveries in two, three or more days have become an industry standard since
years, every actor has been able to put in place a system working within this
time windows, not only few ground-breaking players; this huge diffusion has
allowed research on these topics to develop deeply and to move from few
proofs of practical examples or cases to a well theorized framework of models
and algorithms of global application. 7 papers (corresponding to the 25
percent) focus on the picking activity and they report all mathematical
models or simulations. Some of these contributions relate to the design of
automated distribution centers with automated storage/retrieval systems,
together with the application of ant colony system algorithms for optimal
pickers’ routing within the center; their implementation provides greater
storage space to solve problems of inventory management and also more
efficient and flexible operations for what concerns handling of customer
orders; the benefit of these systems in the eCommerce context, which is
demanding more and more speed every day, is clear but no references to
really fast delivery processes (i.e. less than one day) are present in these
papers (Hu K.Y. and Chang T.S., 2009; Hu K.Y. and Chang T.S., 2010). Then
we have other papers presenting simulations of newly developed algorithms
for the optimization of different activities inside the walls of a distribution
center: one paper focuses on the storage location assignment problem of
newly delivered products and provides a dynamic solution to it, overcoming
the limitations of a-priori static allocation (Tsamis N. et al., 2015); another
contribution proposes a joint optimization algorithm of both order batching
and picker routing with the objective of minimizing the total travel distance
involved in the process (Li J. et al., 2017); other two papers study
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
41
mathematical models for order picking optimization as it is considered the
bottleneck activity of the whole supply chain due to the overlapping of
products’ pickup in response to consumers’ orders, returned products’
delivery back to storage locations and order pickers’ interactions for routing
decisions inside the area (Zu Q. and Sun B., 2015; Schrotenboer A.H. et al.,
2016). Again all of these articles, dealing with optimization techniques, bring
to the reach of more reliable and faster processes, minimizing cost and time
of the single activities, but no reference to fast or same day or next day
delivery processes is provided. One last paper investigates the link between
operational complexity and distribution structure of a company operating in
the eCommerce sector, mainly looking at the distinction between companies
having prevalently a store infrastructure to carry out storage and picking
activities and firms relying on an infrastructure made of warehouses only; the
fastening of the delivery process is not addressed (de Koster R., 2002).
The same number of papers (7 out of 28) deal with both activities of
picking and delivery and in this case we can see a clear prevalence of case
studies (3) and surveys (2) with respect to simulations (1) and conceptual
models (1): trying to explain this pattern, we could infer that if applying a
universally valid model to a single activity is quite simple and can lead to
measurable efficiency results, when looking at the management of a complex
chain of activities the application of a single algorithm is no more possible;
more useful information can be conversely obtained by observing the actions
undertaken by some successful companies and clever insights could be got in
order to develop then a personalized strategy. In fact by looking at the
content of these contributions, a big role is played by comparisons of different
business models implemented by real companies: comparisons can be
between two actors (one having achieved success and the other having failed
in its strategy, e.g. Webvan versus Tesco or again Webvan versus Peapod) and
mainly focusing on e-operations’ strategic management (with respect to
traditional business operations) and its alignment with marketing strategy
(Delaney-Klinger K. et al., 2003; Lunce S.E. et al., 2006); or three most
common supply chain scenarios can be investigated, in one case with the aim
of analyzing the impact of new forms of proximity deliveries on city logistics
and consumers’ shopping trips (Durand B. and Gonzalez-Feliu J., 2012), while
in the other case to carry out an analysis of costs’ distribution over different
processes in the chain (Vanelslander T. et al., 2013); or more data coming from
surveys (one based on 55 online retailers, the other based on 4 Internet-
ordering and home-delivering grocers and their 2440 customers) are used to
address the logistic fulfillment process, comparing different choices on where
to fulfill customer orders (existing stores versus dedicated distribution
centers) and on the delivery method (direct to customers’ house/office or
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
42
indirect via customer pickup or via third-party logistics provider) (de Koster
R., 2003; Boyer K.K. and Hult G.T.M., 2005). Just one contribution addresses a
more theoretical framework, presenting an iterative solution in which
acceptance or rejection of delivery requests is first performed (based on
forecasted expected delivery requests and cost-minimizing routing) and then
the routing solution is updated in order to minimize costs of delivery
(Cleophas C. and Ehmke J.F., 2014). Few of the aforementioned papers cite the
theme of delivery speed but no cases faster than 48-hours delivery are
presented; however the large majority of them look at the best chain in terms
of minimum cost or minimum distance travelled or maximum activities’
efficiency and of course all of these results have a positive impact in terms of
time savings, but no interest is posed on the trends of delivery in less than one
day.
Lastly, the most tackled activity is delivery: in fact it is the theme of half
of the papers classified as “others” (14 out of 28) and they mainly consist of
analytical models (5), conceptual models (3) and algorithms’ simulations (2),
while a small portion of them is dedicated to case studies (2), surveys (1) and
literature reviews (1); this is in line with the aforementioned thought that it is
quite simple to apply a model or to verify an algorithm when one single
activity is addressed (in this case, just management of the delivery process,
most often only looking at the last-mile portion of it). We can find algorithms
to solve time-dependent vehicle routing problem for a large number of
delivery locations in a dynamic manner (i.e. without an initial data
preparation phase) (Xu R. et al., 2014; Li Y. et al., 2015; Liu L. et al., 2016),
other algorithms for logistics distribution scheduling based on workflows and
vehicles’ load under the constraints of traffic conditions and time window
(Xiao H. et al., 2013; Xu R. et al., 2014), while some others deal again with
scheduling but focusing on the selection of time slots to offer in each zip code
of the served regions and on potential improvements in the choice of zip
codes to be served through address intelligence (Agatz N. et al., 2011; van Duin
J.H.R. et al., 2016). All the previous mathematical models have activities’
optimization as final aim, so they imply a reduction of time for activities’
management but they do not refer to fast deliveries taking place in one day or
less; in some cases they can refer to the selection of specific time windows
within a certain day or week, but it only regards the agreement on the
moment of delivery with the customer, not the speed of the whole process
from order placement to final distribution. Then there are some more
theoretical frameworks which study the emerging trends in eCommerce
transportation for what concerns mainly means of transport and technologies
developed to make faster and more efficient deliveries: air transportation
infrastructure is one of these transportation means (but no services faster
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
43
than three days delivery are cited) (Lasserre F., 2004), another example are
electric cargo bicycles employed by individuals messengers or couriers to
replace own traditional bicycles or car (it surely refers to daily deliveries of
messengers or small parcel couriers, but no reference is made to the length of
the whole order cycle time and its speed) (Gruber J. et al., 2014). Other papers
analyze innovative concepts for optimization of urban traffic and final
deliveries (avoiding unattended ones) developed by the different actors
involved in eCommerce logistics services (e.g. e-grocers, parcel express actors,
e-retailers in general, etc.): among these last-mile innovations we found
attended collection/delivery points (CDPs) such as convenience stores, petrol
stations, post offices, etc. (applied to the case of UK West Sussex region)
(Song R. et al., 2009) and consumer choice portal-package consolidation
centers within densely populated geographical areas (Harrington T.S. et al.,
2016). Finally, some contributions follow a more theoretical framework to
analyze trends, opportunities and threats in logistics choices about
eCommerce; we have a review of main e-fulfillment strategies implemented
by players operating in the last-mile step of the supply chain (Lee H.L. and
Whang S., 2001); a research on the relationships between logistics capabilities,
logistics outsourcing and global performance in firms engaging in eCommerce
(Cho J.J.K. et al., 2008); a comparison between the main operational models
applied by merchants operating in the e-tailing business and in the parcel
express industry in China (with a clear distinction among supply chain-based
merchants, e-marketplace-based e-tailers and third party logistics providers)
(Wang J.J. and Xiao Z., 2015); a research on the main challenges faced by
traditional grocers who want to enter the business of online food sales
(mainly logistics and transportation issues) with a focus on French and
German cases and the trends around customers’ adoption of this non-
traditional purchasing process (Saskia S. et al., 2016). Even if these last
contributions analyze also some quite recent trends (especially the last two
papers cited), the challenges of same day or even faster delivery are not
addressed.
(2) Type of activity/activities addressed. As previously stated, the second variable
used for the classification is the definition of the one or more supply chain
activities which constitute the focus of the papers. Picking alone is the least
addressed process: just 9 papers out of the total 52 (corresponding to 17
percent) only analyze the handling activities occurring inside distribution
centers, dealing with the phases of order preparation. The research methods
found in the majority of these contributions are mathematical/analytical
models (5 papers) and simulations (2), while only one conceptual framework
and one case study are present. About speed of delivery, we can notice that
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
44
just one paper is about fast delivery and none of them addresses the theme of
same day delivery; again one paper only studies the process of 24 hours or
next day delivery, while the most part (7 out of 9) shows the presence of
papers classified as others. The fact of finding so many algorithms and models
can be linked to the huge presence of “others” contributions about delivery: in
fact, this means that picking has been mostly studied in case of standard
eCommerce delivery processes, the ones which have been in place for most
years and have had the opportunity of being deeply investigated and
optimized; on the contrary, when dealing with faster order cycle times (i.e.
less than 24 hours) in eCommerce, scarce attention has been paid to the
management of activities inside distribution centers, typically storage and
picking. This means that for what concerns fast deliveries there is a lot of
room available for the analysis and the optimization of picking activity; in
fact, being fast does not only imply reaching the customer at the highest
possible speed, but also preparing the order rapidly, having it ready to leave
the distribution center as soon as possible. Most of the papers introduce
models for the optimization and time reduction of activities in traditional
processes: some analyze the introduction of automated systems for items’
storage and retrieval (Hu K.Y. and Chang T.S., 2009; Hu K.Y. and Chang T.S.,
2010); some focus on clustering of orders’ batches (Zu Q. and Sun B., 2015; Li J.
et al., 2017) or on optimizing pickers’ routing (Schrotenboer A.H. et al., 2016;
Li J. et al., 2017); others address the optimization of items’ storage locations’
assignment (Tsamis N. et al., 2016) or of fulfillment centers’ distribution and
structure (de Koster R., 2002). The paper which deals with next day delivery
proposes the case study of a really existing distribution center for snacks’
distribution and simulates different alternatives for products’ allocation in the
warehouse, replenishment strategies and picking activities in order to be
compliant with the industry standard of 24 hours for order fulfillment
(Gagliardi J.P. et al., 2008). Lastly, one contribution introduces the need for
picking information to be conveyed in real time, in order to arrange dynamic
picking inside the warehouse (i.e. with the operator picking orders arriving in
real time during the picking operations and information continuously
changing during a picking cycle) instead of traditional pre-arranged batch
picking processes; this model helps companies to be on-time offering services
which can be surely considered as fast deliveries (in fact, examples of a
merchant delivering in 45 minutes and of another operating in three hours
are provided) (Gong Y. and De Koster R., 2008).
Few more contributions (13 out of 52, corresponding to 25 percent) address
both activities of picking and delivery; by looking at the research method, we
can notice an opposite pattern with respect to the one of “only picking”
papers: most of them are conceptual frameworks (4) or case studies (4) and
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
45
surveys (2), just two are the simulations, one literature review and no
mathematical models are provided. We can so assert that the trend of
addressing more activities along the supply chain (not only what happens
going out from the distribution centers, but also what occurs before inside) is
still under development and significant contributions are provided by real
companies which show their operations management example; in some cases
it has been possible to develop more general frameworks or models, but they
analyze activities in a conceptual manner; quite difficult instead is to build
integrative mathematical algorithms able to concurrently optimize two
activities so different one from the other. The fact of being this topic still
under development is confirmed by looking at the delivery speed on which
these papers focus: in fact, an increasing number of contributions (with
respect to the one of papers about picking) pay attention to recent fastening
processes, having one paper about fast delivery, three about same day and two
about 24 hours (or next day delivery); more than a half (7 out of 13) still
belong to the “others” category, but a growing interest in fast order cycle
times has to be underlined. Starting from papers categorized as “others”, they
mainly regard comparisons of different business models implemented by real
companies: we can find some case studies comparing operations of two
Internet grocers, one success and one failure, firstly looking at the strategic
alignment between operations and marketing strategies, then giving an
overview also at the characteristics of e-operations (particularly at logistics
infrastructure and information technology deployment) (Delaney-Klinger K.
et al., 2003; Lunce S.E. et al., 2006); some surveys of many online retailers (55
in one case, 4 in the other) investigate different distribution strategies,
including both the choice of the distribution infrastructure used to serve
customers (existing stores’ warehouses or dedicated DCs) and the delivery
area/method (home delivery or customer pickup or recourse to third party
logistics provider) (de Koster R., 2003; Boyer K.K. and Hult G.T.M., 2005);
another paper simulates three scenarios related to e-grocery distribution
strategies, combining different picking logics (in-warehouse and in-store)
with various proximity delivery approaches and studies their impact on city
logistics and customers’ trips (Durand B. and Gonzalez-Feliu J., 2012); a paper
presents a framework to assess logistics costs’ distribution throughout the
most commonly used supply chains for online grocery sales, from order
picking at the supplier to delivery to customer’s doorstep (Vanelslander T. et
al., 2013); finally, a case study of a German metropolitan area is provided, in
which both decisions upon acceptance or refusal of orders based on
transportation capacity and upon routing solution in order to pursue cost
minimization are made (Cleophas C. and Ehmke J.F., 2014). All the previous
papers’ aim is the optimization of activities, through times and cost
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
46
minimization; in some cases they relate to daily couriers’ deliveries or choice
of time slots for the last-mile portion of distribution, but none of them
addresses fast order cycle time, none staying within the 24-hours time frame
for the whole process. Then we can find two papers addressing the theme of
next day (or 24 hours) delivery: the first designs the transformation process
from a traditional warehouse into an e-fulfillment center (together with its
strategic and operational requirements) in the case companies want to
implement a multi-channel strategy and add to their traditional business the
business-to-consumer eCommerce, being able to offer a service which
requires one day to be carried out (Tarn J.M. et al., 2003); the second paper
introduces an algorithm for stock allocation along the distributive
infrastructure of e-grocers with the final aim of reducing overall delivery
times (referring to order cycle times which stay around one day) and
considering tradeoffs between picking and delivery activities’ cost (Scott J.E.
and Scott C.H., 2008). The most recent papers, instead, deal with same day
and fast deliveries: there are two conceptual frameworks describing some
relevant operators and/or merchants which carry out same day deliveries,
exploring some key factors determining the success or failure of their
operations (addressing picking, packing and last-mile distribution) in order to
stay within the same day time window (Sareen H., 2013; Hausmann L. et al.,
2014); another paper presents the case study of a really existing company
which operates as an online electronic components’ distributor, deeply
describing the way all activities are carried out in order to offer a same day
delivery service (Kumagai J., 2014). Lastly, we have a literature review of the
state-of-the-art of eCommerce logistics along the whole supply chain from a
practice perspective, with a review of typical North-American, European and
Asia-Pacific eCommerce logistics companies so as to get lessons from their
operations management and to understand future opportunities and possible
developments of this business (Yu Y. et al., 2016); being it a very current
contribution, among the companies many examples of the fast delivery trend
can be found, with processes lasting overall a few hours.
The last category for what concerns the type of activity addressed deals
with delivery alone and it is the most copious one: it is made of 30
contributions out of the total 52 (corresponding to 58 percent), which means
that most attention is paid to this topic, especially to its final portion that is
the last-mile at the customer doorstep. For what concerns the research
method, a significant portion of these papers belong to the category of
analytical/mathematical models (9) and simulations (6), then there are also
many case studies (6) and conceptual frameworks (5) while only a residual
portion is left to literature reviews (3) and surveys (1); globally, theoretical
papers about models (made by the sum of analytical models, conceptual
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
47
frameworks and simulations, which are 20) largely overcome the empirical
ones (case studies and surveys, which together are just 7) and this means that
the topic of delivery has been subject of deep investigation, which has allowed
to collect a sufficient amount of data in order to develop frameworks of
general interest, not only applicable to few disparate cases. The presence of so
many developed frameworks can be linked to the fact that almost a half of the
contributions (14 out of 30) deal with the least recent trend about delivery
speed, the one categorized as “others” and subjected to researches for many
years; but, there is also a relevant part of the papers addressing the last
developments in terms of speed: in fact, five papers deal with 24-hours (or
next day) delivery, six address the theme of same day delivery and again five
belong to the category of fast delivery. It becomes evident that the activity of
delivery is not only the one investigated the most since the very beginning
and spread of eCommerce, but it is also the one mostly studied when dealing
with new opportunities and trends in the industry. In fact, this activity
implies the delivery of small items at a huge number of different locations,
with all the constraints that traffic imposes to the tour and the need of having
someone attending the delivery location; for sure this is the most complex
activity to be managed and the one which requires huge efforts in terms of
optimization techniques; we can easily understand why it has always been the
main research focus, while activities inside the warehouse have been of lower
interest from researchers’ viewpoint.
Starting with “others” category, first there are some mathematical models
or simulations providing algorithms for the optimization of different
activities: a pair of them look at vehicle routing problem considering a specific
order available time as main constraint, computing the best path in a dynamic
way (i.e. without recurring to an a priori data preparation phase) and aiming
at minimizing total vehicle completion time (Li Y. et al., 2015; Liu L. et al.,
2016); another model addresses not only optimal route issue, but introduces
also a distribution scheduling algorithm in order to solve the problem of
tracking a huge amount of express deliveries on the basis of the workflow (Xu
R. et al., 2014); one simulation takes into consideration traffic conditions and
available time windows as constraints with the objective of solving
optimizations and scheduling issues of non –fully-loaded vehicles for home
deliveries, trying to load them as much as possible within a certain time frame
and delivery tour (Xiao H. et al., 2013); the last model presents a fully
automated method to select the best set of time slots to be offered in each of
the zip codes’ areas of a specific served region, pursuing cost-effectiveness
(Agatz N. et al., 2011). All the aforementioned models refer to daily or weekly
time windows, with a general goal of respecting available times or even
minimizing them, but no reference is made to the ability of arranging next
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
48
day deliveries, neither faster ones. Then, there are some more theoretical
contributions dealing with the general topic of logistics strategies for e-
fulfillment: one literature review lists five possible strategic alternatives (i.e.
logistics postponement, dematerialization, resources exchange, leveraged
shipments and brick-and-mortar model) and their match with different
companies’ typologies (Lee H.L. and Whang S., 2001); one research collects
data via a survey in order to examine the possible relations among firms’
logistics capabilities, logistics outsourcing strategy and the assessment of
firms’ operational performance (Cho J.J.K. et al., 2008); one framework
specifically focuses on development of e-tailing industry in China, analyzing
operational models put in place by parcel couriers (more precisely, e-tailers
operating a supply chain-based business and others working in an
emarketplace-based environment) and the different trends which are found in
terms of geographic coverage of the distributive infrastructure (Wang J.J. and
Xiao Z., 2015); another framework is developed to design and evaluate
different last-mile solutions, based on design criteria taken from supply chain
and operations management literature, and particularly demonstrating
convenience of implementing Consumer Choice Portal-Package
Consolidation Centers (i.e. a portal enabling consumers’ choice to resort to a
packaging consolidation center for supporting home deliveries) within
densely populated urban geographies (Harrington T.S. et al., 2016); one last
case study addresses logistics solutions and innovative distributive structures
put in place by e-grocers, comparing the cases of two European countries (i.e.
France and Germany) in which e-grocery has arisen almost at the same time
but it has developed with considerable differences (Saskia S. et al., 2016). Also
these contributions, even if describing distribution strategies and deeply
looking at operations management, do not address the trend of fast deliveries.
Two papers deal with the topic of failed-first-time home deliveries and
provide proposals for solving this phenomenon: one paper studies the
convenience of CDPs’ (Collection and Delivery Points) implementation with
respect to the traditional delivery method in the real case of an household
retailer operating in West Sussex (UK) (Song R. et al., 2009), the other
research implies address intelligence (and the application of multiple linear
regression techniques) using historical delivery data in order to predict future
delivery results and improve its efficiency (van Duin J.H.R. et al., 2016); both
papers consider deliveries carried out within specific time slots or on pre-
arranged dates, focusing so on the compliance with available times but with
no reference at all to systems working within next day limits. Lastly, two
contributions provide examples of transportation means able to reduce
shipping times (but again, not considering fast overall order cycle time): the
first studies the introduction of air cargos into parcel couriers’ offer, but it
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
49
refers to speed trends of more than a decade ago and the maximum speed
able to be offered is three days (Lasserre F., 2004), the second analyzes
electric cargo bikes’ use by individual couriers or instant messengers in their
daily delivery tour in order to assess convenience of these means and factors
influencing individual willingness to utilize them (Gruber J. et al., 2014).
Moving to papers categorized as “24h”, they mostly consist of simulations
(3) and then we have one analytical model and one case study. Four out of the
five contributions belonging to this class address the topic of inefficiency of
unattended home deliveries: two simulations present different alternatives for
receiving goods, specifically reception box and delivery box approaches’, and
assess the service level they are able to offer to consumers together with their
cost from the retailers’ viewpoint; they both refer to e-grocery industry and
they consider the real case of Finnish areas in which grocers perform next day
deliveries (Punakivi M. et al., 2001; Kamarainen V. et al., 2001). One paper
considers again e-grocery and next day delivery and applies vehicle routing
and genetic algorithms to assess operations’ efficiency and cost of three last-
mile alternatives (i.e. attended home delivery, reception box and collection-
and-delivery point), simulating them in scenarios with different population
density and order quantity (Wang X. et al., 2014); the fourth paper studies the
case of France and Germany in which parcel delivery operators have
successfully developed pickup points and parcel lockers as alternatives to
home delivery, analyzing the key drivers of their development and providing
real examples of merchants carrying out deliveries in 24 hours (Morganti E. et
al., 2014). The fifth paper is a mathematical model and proposes an algorithm
to personalize scheduling of express deliveries, in order not only to guarantee
delivery punctuality to customers but also to have the total completion time
minimized; it explicitly refers to one-day delivery service and it is evaluated
by analyzing GPS trajectories of more than one thousand couriers over a
period of two months in Beijing (Sun Y. et al., 2016).
For what concerns the “same day” category, there is an equal presence of
analytical models (2), conceptual frameworks (2) and literature reviews(2).
The two mathematical models propose algorithms to solve dynamic pickup
and delivery problem with time windows faced by local area courier
companies delivering letters or small parcels; one is more focused on the way
waiting times are distributed along vehicle routes, comparing so four different
waiting strategies (Mitrovic-Minic S. and Laporte G., 2004), the other employs
anticipatory algorithms and considers real time fleet management in a more
comprehensive way, addressing requests’ assignment to vehicles, routing,
scheduling of routes and relocation of idle vehicles (Ghiani G. et al., 2009);
they both refer explicitly to parcel delivery operators who carry out same day
service. The two literature reviews focus on the latest developments of
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
50
internet shopping and home delivery and their impacts on city logistics:
challenges and opportunities affecting transport within urban areas comprise
traffic congestion, safety, environmental-friendly vehicles powered by
alternative fuels, etc. and they are completely different from one country to
another; both papers expressly analyze also city logistics’ challenges and
opportunities brought by same day deliveries with real examples (Visser J. et
al., 2014; Savelsbergh M.and Van Woensel T., 2016). While for what concerns
conceptual frameworks, one addresses again the topic of city logistics,
underlines the benefits that courier express and parcel services (CEP) could
get from a cooperative planning with traffic control management (TM)
systems which control city traffic flows and simulates the best path for home
deliveries performed within a single day (Koster F. et al., 2016); the other
presents four innovations which are expected to strongly influence last-mile
deliveries in the next five to seven years (i.e. advanced algorithms and
analytics, drones, robots and driverless vehicles) and analyzes the case of
some market entrants developing these technologies and their business
models, with various examples of operators implementing these innovative
tools in order to make their same day delivery service even faster and more
reliable (Lee H.L. et al., 2016).
Looking at the last category of “fast” deliveries, most papers (3 out of 5) are
case studies, but we can also find one mathematical model and one
simulation. Two of the case studies focus on European courier express and
parcel sector, with a specific attention to France: one analyzes the
organization of the network of pickup points implemented in Paris and its
region and describes how this infrastructure is able to allow deliveries to be
accessible in some minutes (Morganti E. et al., 2014); the second uses
interviews of French players in the sector and compares them to players of
other European countries in order to make an overall evaluation of sector’s
changes, drivers and future prospects, based on real examples and figures
among which we can find couriers performing same-hour delivery (Ducret R.,
2014). The third case focuses on a single new UK service, called Shutl,
consisting of a platform which aggregates couriers’ capacity in the same day
market and allowing retailers to offer delivery options which stay within a 90
minutes’ time window (Runciman B., 2011). The simulation aims at comparing
some acceptance mechanisms, differing in the amount of travel time
information that has to be collected and considered in order to decide
whether to accommodate a delivery request or not; the final objective is the
one of accepting as many requests as possible, considering the tradeoff
between the cost for information collection and usage and the service level,
which in many cases guarantees deliveries in less than one hour (Ehmke J.F.
and Campbell A.M., 2014). Finally, the analytical model proposes a large scale
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
51
mobile crowd-tasking model in which a large pool of citizen workers are used
to perform last-mile delivery within a city, in order to minimize global
travelling cost but also assure delivery efficiency and reduce unattended home
deliveries’ rate; experiments of this model are conducted by using Singapore
and Beijing datasets, in which many operators performing deliveries in few
hours or even less can be found.
2.3.3 Second matrix classification: speed of the logistics process – field of application
Table 99 - second classification: speed of logistics vs. application field
Another interesting classification can be made by looking at the application field of the articles: we can first consider separately the group of papers dealing with logistics in general terms and the subset of them which addresses the area of fast logistics (difference which has been deeply explained in the previous pages); for both the two classes, we can try to understand the field which logistics is applied to. In fact, logistics can specifically relate to eCommerce field and to the management of activities to be performed in order to have this channel working (more from a retailer’s perspective); or, logistics can address customer experience, looking at the performances of the delivery process perceived by consumers, no matter the channel used in order to serve them; or in the end, both fields of eCommerce and customer experience can represent an area of interest.
traditional logistics fast logistics
eCommerce Lee and Whang (2001); de Koster (2002); Delaney-Klinger et al. (2003); Tarn et al. (2003); de Koster (2003); Lunce et al. (2006); Scott and Scott (2008); Cho et al. (2008); Song et al. (2009); Hu and Chang (2009); Hu and Chang (2010); Durand and Gonzalez-Feliu (2012); Xiao et al. (2013); Vanelslander et al. (2013); Xu et al. (2014); Wang and Xiao (2015); Zu and Sun (2015); Tsamis et al. (2015); Liu et al. (2016); Li et al. (2017)
Gagliardi et al. (2008); Gong and de Koster (2008); Sareen (2013); Morganti et al. (2014); Morganti et al. (2014); Wang et al. (2016); Yu et al. (2016); Lee et al. (2016)
customer experience Lasserre (2004); Wang et al. (2014); Gruber et al. (2014); Cleophas and Ehmke (2014); Li et al. (2015); Sun et al. (2016); Harrington et al. (2016); van Duin et al. (2016)
Mitrovic-Minic and Laporte (2004); Ghiani et al. (2009); Runciman (2011); Ehmke and Campbell (2014); Koster et al. (2015); Savelsbergh and Van Woensel (2016)
eCommerce & customer experience
Punakivi et al. (2001); Kamarainen et al. (2001); Boyer and Hult (2005); Agatz et al. (2011); Schrotenboer et al. (2016); Saskia et al. (2016)
Visser et al. (2014); Ducret (2014); Hausmann et al. (2014); Kumagai (2014)
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
52
First of all, as we could expect also from previous analyses, most of the articles
(34 out 52, corresponding to 65 percent) address logistics in its general terms,
without a clear reference to the process timing. On the contrary, 18 papers
(corresponding to the remaining 35 percent) deal with fast logistics and so
processes which are carried out within twenty-four hours; going into details, two
of these writings are about next day deliveries (Gagliardi J.P. et al., 2008 aimed at
studying storage and picking activities for next day delivery provision; Morganti
E. et al., 2014 contrarily focused on transportation activities and in particular last-
mile portion). Half of these papers (9 out of 18) deal instead with same day
processes: one third of them present algorithms and/or simulations for
scheduling and routing of last-mile delivery activities from couriers’ viewpoint
(Mitrovic-Minic S. and Laporte G., 2004; Ghiani G. et al., 2009; Koster F. et al.,
2015); another third consist of frameworks describing most recent trends and
technologies applied by logistics operators for what concerns city logistics and
last-mile delivery, with a particular attention to innovations in the vehicles used
(Visser J. et al., 2014; Savelsbergh M. and Van Woensel T., 2016; Lee H.L. et al.,
2016); the last third present, in a more or less deepened way, cases of merchants
performing same day deliveries and have a look at the whole operations process,
Figure 2 - two-dimensional classification along with research method
: simulation : case study
: conceptual framework : analytical model
: literature review : survey
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
53
from picking and storage activities until the final leg of last-mile at customers’
doorstep (Sareen H., 2013; Hausmann L. et al., 2014; Kumagai J., 2014). Finally, 7
out of the 18 articles deepen the theme of fast deliveries (i.e. requiring just few
hours to be performed): four of them present case studies of logistics operators
building up innovative methods in order to carry out fast last-mile deliveries
(such as, for example, pickup points for items’ collection by consumers or crowd-
sourcing models with independent couriers working with their own means of
transport) (Runciman B., 2011; Ducret R., 2014; Morganti E. et al., 2014; Wang Y. et
al., 2016); one stays in the field of delivery but provides a simulation in which
different order acceptance mechanisms are compared in order to optimize
couriers’ scheduling activity (Ehmke J.F. and Campbell A.M., 2014); another paper
simulates alternatives of dynamic order picking for delivery performances which
stay within the timeframe of one hour (Gong Y. and De Koster R., 2008); lastly
one article proposes a review of cases of merchants operating few hours deliveries
by analyzing picking activities together with delivery options (Yu Y. et al., 2016).
Starting then from the most copious group (i.e. articles about logistics
without time limitations), we can notice that big part of them (20 out of 34
papers, corresponding to 59 percent) refer to the field of eCommerce. Five papers
propose cases of grocers which expand their traditional business by
implementing an e-grocery channel; all of them address tradeoffs that these
players face in the implementation of the whole e-fulfillment process, from
picking to final delivery and in some cases provide examples of success’ practices
in opposition to practices which have conversely led to failure; this means that
significant contributions exist when talking about grocery industry which enters
the eCommerce and they are also quite well structured as they analyze the overall
supply chain and not only portions of it; however, a big lack is represented by the
fact that none of these cases report fast processes: e-grocers often offer the choice
of the date and time of delivery, by they usually require many days in order to be
arranged and they have to be booked in advance (Delaney-Klinger K. et al., 2003;
Lunce S.E. et al., 2006; Scott J.E. and Scott C.H., 2008; Durand B. and Gonzalez-
Feliu J., 2012; Vanelslander T.et al., 2013). Other five papers address alternatives of
operations and e-fulfillment strategies in order to best suit the characteristics of
different merchants; a pair of them considers the whole supply chain, from the
management of stores/warehouses to the choice of the delivery infrastructure
and area (Tarn J.M. et al., 2003; De Koster R., 2003), while the others are
particularly focused on the distribution strategy and they stress the attention on
the fact that two main kinds of logistics operators and/or retailers exist
(traditional multichannel operators and Internet-based pure players) and each
category requires a differentiated operational approach when dealing with the
design of the e-fulfillment strategy (Lee H.L. and Whang S., 2001; De Koster R.,
2002; Wang J.J. and Xiao Z., 2015); they are very different research methods
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
54
(conceptual frameworks, literature reviews, analytical models or surveys) all
aimed at answering to te question of how to organize the logistic fulfillment
process when an online transaction takes place but none of them deals with the
concept of process’ speed. Other five articles are just focused on players
operating only into the eCommerce context, the ones which have entered this
new business from scratch: three of them analyze the couriers and logistics
operators’ context and they propose simulations/analytical models aimed at
optimizing scheduling of non-fully loaded vehicles and vehicles’ routing with
order available time as constraint, so as to improve efficiency of business-to-
consumer eCommerce delivery (Xiao H. et al., 2013; Xu R. et al., 2014; Liu L. et al.,
2016); conversely, the remaining two papers deal with retailers just operating in
the eCommerce business: in one case firms’ performances are examined and in
particular the impact on them of the choice of leveraging on internal firms’
logistics capabilities versus resorting to logistics outsourcing (Cho J.J.K. et al.,
2008); in the other case the impact that failed first time home deliveries have on
retailers’ service performances is studied and the cost convenience of collection
and delivery points as an alternative to additional carriers’ journeys and/or
customers’ trips to stores is supported (Song R. et al., 2009). These last two
papers are less theoretical than previous models (i.e. they are one survey and one
case study), so they present examples of real cases but again none of them
explicitly address the theme of fast deliveries. Lastly, five papers regard the
storage and picking activities alone, without any reference to delivery options.
Two of them present analytical models for the development of automated storage
and retrieval systems in the case of traditional retailers deciding to add the online
channel to their business; their aim is minimizing picking times when the choice
of being multichannel retailers inevitably makes the service harder to be
managed, but they do not refer to really fast services as next day or even shorter
(Hu K.Y. and Chang T.S., 2009; Hu K.Y. and Chang T.S., 2010). The other three
articles look at activities’ management inside a logistics center operating for the
eCommerce channel only: again they are algorithms and their goal is the one of
optimizing items’ storage, orders’ batching and pickers’ routing for a well-
functioning e-fulfillment service, even if very fast processes are not yet taken into
considerations (Zu Q. and Sun B., 2015; Tsamis N. et al., 2015; Li J. et al., 2017). So
we can infer that, when dealing with standard logistics services, eCommerce
represents a quite widely investigated field along the whole supply chain process
and for many different types of players with the objective of entering this
business.
The second topic addressed is customer experience: 8 out of the 34 papers
about traditional logistics (corresponding to 23 percent) deal with the assessment
of service performances not applied to eCommerce but to traditional channels.
Three of them are about last-mile delivery and they compare through simulations
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
55
convenience of different delivery options for last-mile (e.g. reception boxes,
collection and delivery points, consolidation centers or traditional attended
home deliveries) or of alternative transportation means for reaching customers’
doorstep (e.g. traditional bicycles or even electric ones versus cars’ use); they all
compare performances of different couriers’ delivery services from customers’
viewpoint (Wang X. et al., 2014; Gruber J. et al., 2014; Harrington T.S. et al., 2016).
Other three writings consist of analytical or conceptual frameworks which
propose personalized services for scheduling couriers’ inter-city delivery: one
focuses on the development of a dynamic path computation which optimizes
routing process by eliminating a time-consuming a-priori data collection phase
(Li Y. et al., 2015); another offers personalized travel time estimation by studying
GPS trajectories usually followed by couriers (Sun Y. et al., 2016); the third applies
address intelligence in order to identify the set of zip codes’ areas served which
enable parcel companies to optimize their service (van Duin J.H.R. et al., 2016).
One paper faces the theme of increasing geographical distance between retailers
and the markets they serve and through an analytical model it assesses the
advantage of delivery technologies such as air cargos; however, the fastest service
analyzed does not stay within the boundary of three-days delivery (Lasserre F.,
2004). Lastly, there is one computational study from a German metropolitan area
which provides a combined approach for delivery requests’ acceptance and, based
on that, cost-minimizing routing solution; it is the only paper considering
together picking and delivery activities’ performances (Cleophas C. and Ehmke
J.F., 2014). We can affirm that papers about customer experience are not so
copious and they mainly present algorithms enabling couriers to optimize their
delivery paths; there is a lack of contributions about employable technologies
and/or means of transport which can be perceived as a value-adding solution also
in the final customers’ eyes and moreover, picking activity is almost forgotten.
The left 6 papers out of the 34 about standard logistics (i.e. 18 percent)
concern together customer experience and eCommerce fields. Two of them are
simulations about the topic of last-mile delivery, analyzing service and cost level
of eCommerce delivery alternatives (i.e. reception and delivery boxes as an
alternative to traditional attended home delivery): one applies to the case of a
Finnish e-grocer (Punakivi M. et al., 2001), the other describes the case of logistics
operators working in the Helsinki area (Kamarainen V. et al., 2001). Other two
papers apply to the context of e-grocers only and their delivery options: the first
is a model aimed at selecting the optimal set of time slots to offer in each zip
code area, pursuing together cost-effectiveness but also an acceptable service
level (Agatz N. et al., 2011); the second compares delivery solutions for e-grocery
industry introduced in France and Germany (Saskia S. et al., 2016). One paper
deals only with picking activity and assesses the impact that different routing
techniques for pickers working inside the same picking area have on the delivery
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
56
time of eCommerce orders (Schrotenboer A.H. et al., 2016). In the end, one
survey uses data collected from 2440 customers in order to compare strategies of
four different e-grocers in terms of choice of fulfillment center and of delivery
method, integrating so storage/picking and delivery activities (Boyer K.K. and
Hult G.T.M., 2005). From this cluster of articles we can observe that almost all
activities of the supply chain are tackled; but a significant portion of
contributions comes from e-grocery business and a lot of information should be
collected for what concerns customer experience in eCommerce for other
strongly developed industries (e.g. informatics and consumer electronics,
clothing, etc.).
Moving to the second cluster, the one of papers about fast logistics (which are
18 out of the total 52 as previously written), 8 of them (corresponding to 45
percent) deal with the business of eCommerce. Half of these 8 articles address
the topic of last-mile delivery: two are case studies of alternatives to home
delivery developed by European parcel operators, especially French and German
ones, analyzing the key drivers of the development of pickup points’ and parcel
lockers’ networks to improve efficiency in case of online orders (Morganti E. et
al., 2014; Morganti E. et al., 2014); one is a conceptual framework in which four
innovations expected to influence development of same day deliveries in the
following years are described (i.e. advanced algorithms and analytics, drones,
robots and driverless vehicles), so as to provide forecasts on future innovations in
terms of technologies and business models applied for improving same day
services for eCommerce (Lee H.L. et al., 2016); the fourth paper proposes an
algorithm for developing a crowd-sourcing model in which a large pool of
citizens can participate and perform last-mile deliveries in very fast times (few
hours) and it is experimented with Singapore and Beijing datasets of online
customers (Wang Y. et al., 2016). Two papers instead regard the picking activity:
one presents the case study of a real distribution center which employs a pick-to-
built system to perform e-fulfillment of orders in 24 hours, analyzing different
heuristics for product locating, replenishing and picking (Gagliardi J.P. et al.,
2008); the other simulates the application of a dynamic order picking system (i.e.
system in which workers pick orders arriving in real-time during picking
operations and information can dynamically change during the picking cycle) to
warehouses operating for eCommerce industry only, providing examples of real
operators who, by applying this type of system, are able to provide deliveries in a
very short time (3 hours in the case of one merchant, only 45 minutes for the
other) (Gong Y. and de Koster R., 2008). The last two papers about eCommerce
deal with both activities of picking and delivery and are both conceptual
frameworks: one describes some cases of merchants performing same day
deliveries and explores some key factors for operations’ management which
contribute to success or failure of this type of service (Sareen H., 2013); the other
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
57
review presents the state-of-the-art of eCommerce logistics in supply chain
management from the viewpoint of practitioners (i.e. couriers and other logistics
operators), describing North American, European and Asia Pacific
implementations and corresponding models so as to get insights from best
practices also in terms of fast deliveries (various examples of merchants operating
in few hours are provided) (Yu Y. et al., 2016). Among the aforementioned 8
papers, one fourth belong to the group of articles about next day delivery, a
second fourth deals with same day services while a half of them addresses fast
deliveries; this means that when speaking about eCommerce channel, not only all
the supply chain activities’ (i.e. picking, delivery and the union of the two), but
also all the kinds of fast delivery services are tackled with a certain interest,
especially the most innovative ones working at highest speed.
The second theme addressed is customer experience: 6 out of the 18 papers
about fast logistics (corresponding to 33 percent) do not relate to eCommerce
industry, but assess performances of supply chain activities for orders fulfillment
in traditional channels. All the papers concern the delivery activity only and
describe practices of couriers and other logistics operators to arrange home
delivery. There are two analytical frameworks presenting algorithms to solve
dynamic vehicle dispatching problem with pickups and deliveries within given
time windows evaluating different strategies for all the issues involved in real-
time fleet management (i.e. requests’ assignment to vehicles, vehicles’ routing,
scheduling of routes and relocation of idle vehicles); empirical studies are
conducted using real-life data from courier companies operating same day pickup
and delivery of letters and small parcels in order to show advantages of this type
of models (Mitrovic-Minic S. and Laporte G., 2004; Ghiani G. et al., 2009).
Another modeling simulation deals with couriers’ delivery scheduling and
routing but considers only different requests’ acceptance mechanisms according
to the amount of travel information which are taken into consideration in order
to decide whether to accommodate a request or not; profit and service quality are
the variables compared in the case of different mechanisms’ implementation and
a real-world inspired simulation framework is used to carry out this comparison;
situations in which collection of more travel time information may be worth the
additional effort are investigated, being able to perform fast deliveries which can
be made also in less than one hour (Ehmke J.F. and Campbell A.M., 2014). There
is another framework dealing with couriers’ delivery scheduling and routing, but
this is a conceptual one; it investigates the impact of the activities of traffic
control management (TM) in the context of city logistics for determination of
travel times by courier express and parcel service providers (CEP); this tool helps
optimizing the daily delivery schedule of logistics operators considering city
traffic conditions and expressly refers to delivery routes which have to be
performed within one day (Koster F. et al., 2015). One interesting paper presents
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
58
the case study of Shutl, a new British delivery company able to offer to its
customers two very fast delivery options (90 minutes or 1 hour delivery, with
different cost for each option); this was made possible by operating a platform
which aggregates capacity in the same day courier market via a web service,
resorting to a crowd-sourcing model for last-mile delivery management
(Runciman B., 2011). The most recent literature contribution reviews and
discusses current and anticipated challenges and opportunities regarding
efficient and effective goods’ transportation within urban areas, while taking into
account negative effects of city logistics on traffic congestion and environment; a
variety of logistics operators’ trends is addressed, including crowd-shipping
models and multimodal delivery options, with a particular attention to the theme
of same day delivery (Savelsbergh M. and Van Woensel T., 2016). Even if almost
all research methods can be found within this cluster of papers, a strong
limitation can be noticed: no articles relate to the picking activity or to the whole
order fulfillment process (from picking to delivery), meaning that services
described in these contributions do not take into consideration the time required
for order preparation before the delivery takes place; speaking about same day or
fast services could so be incorrect, because home delivery is just one portion of
the operative supply chain from order issuing to final goods’ provision and it may
require relevant additional time which may make these services no more fast. In
addition, just one case of company being able to really operate at high speed (i.e.
within two or three hours) is reported; the most addressed topic is the one of
same day delivery, very well investigated and deepened so as to allow the
development of general models or frameworks on it; a strong contribution of very
innovative delivery companies’ examples is missed.
The last cluster of papers about fast logistics deal with customer experience
specificly applied to the industry of eCommerce and it consists of 4 papers
(corresponding to 22 percent of the overall articles on fast services). Two of them
address the delivery activity alone: one is a literature review of latest trends
regarding internet shopping and related home delivery and their effects on city
logistics; the negative effect of increased traffic congestion is noticed, but at the
same time recent developments have provided opportunities for the employment
of vehicles powered by alternative fuels supporting sustainability concerns; since
trends are not the same worldwide, single examples for each nation are provided
and an emblematic case of a Japanese merchant operating same day deliveries is
of relevant interest (Visser J. et al., 2014). The other paper about delivery
investigates key factors of the evolution of European Courier, Express and Parcel
sector (CEP); the focus is on French CEP sector’s and urban parcel delivery
sector’s players, developing then comparisons with other European countries so
as to provide an accurate picture of practices’ examples for this under-studied
sector; current changes together with future prospects are investigated and
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
59
significant cases of players serving not only within the same day, but also within
the same hour of order request are described (Ducret R., 2014). The other two
papers provide an overview of all the supply chain activities, from order picking
to items’ delivery, and they both relate to same day services. The first one relates
again to recent parcel sector’s trends and in particular discusses limitation of low-
cost carriers’ models in a context such as the eCommerce in which innovative
services such as same day deliveries, even if they may require additional costs, are
considered as value-adding from customers’ viewpoint; this framework describes
a large number of logistics operators and of its customer companies (i.e. the
merchants resorting to external couriers to perform deliveries for their online
channel) which work within same day of order receipt, considering all activities
of order picking, packing and last-mile home delivery (Hausmann L. et al., 2014).
Lastly, interesting is the case study of Digi-Key Corp., a large electronic
components’ distributor which is able to perform same day delivery; its internal
activities are deeply described in this paper, from order receipt activity to
warehouse operations’ management, moving then to the distributive structure in
order to arrange a process working at high speed (Kumagai J., 2014). Within this
last cluster, picking activity finds stronger attention and in many cases the whole
operative supply chain is investigated; however, most contributions (75 percent
of them) relate to services carried out within one day and only one paper
addresses faster services; in addition, this last paper is about delivery activity, so
no contributions of overall fulfillment processes performed in very fast times are
provided.
2.4 Conclusions from literature review and directions for future research
Given the importance of logistics operations in business-to-consumer
eCommerce supply chain and the growing interest in making the whole process
always faster by offering to end customers express delivery services as an
alternative to standard ones, the aim of this literature review was to make an up-
to-date analysis of the topic of fast deliveries in B2C eCommerce. The review
focused on a set of 52 selected papers published from 2001 to 2017 in 39
international journals. Among these contributions, some other literature reviews
dealing with internet shopping and home deliveries were found, but the majority
of them presented a number of limitations related either to the timeframe they
consider (i.e. they lack of recent contributions, e.g. Lee and Whang, 2001) or to
their content (i.e. they just focus on last-mile shipment and its impact on city
logistics, without addressing the whole process from order receipt; e.g. Visser et
al., 2014; Savelsbergh and Van Woensel, 2016). Just one paper proposed a recent
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
60
review (2016) and tackled all supply chain management activities in eCommerce,
from order picking to final delivery, but it was providing a set of examples of
practices implemented by real companies without addressing fast delivery issue
in a comprehensive manner and not being able to draft, starting from these
practices, a generally valid business model used as reference for this service’s
implementation (Yu et al., 2016). So this review was carried out in order to
overcome the above-mentioned limitations and was organized into three main
sub-sections: discussion of main characteristics (i.e. year of publication, journal
title and type, regions addressed), research method and content of each paper.
The identified papers were mainly published in engineering operations and
activity management journals (28 percent), logistics and transportation journals
(20 percent) and computer and system sciences journals (20 percent). For what
concerns year of publication, the trend was pretty stable from 2001 to 2013, with
two or three papers published each year (with the exception of 2007 in which no
papers were found), while from 2014 on a big boost in the number of publications
can be observed (11 contributions in 2014, 5 in 2015, 10 in 2016; for 2017 just one
paper was found but we have to consider that the analysis was carried out at the
beginning of the year and for sure we can expect to find additional contributions
provided in the following months). Then, looking at the countries addressed, it
should be noted that the number of papers in which the first author is from
China corresponds to 25 percent of the total, followed by a 23 percent of first
researchers coming from USA; this is consistent with the fact that these countries
are experiencing the most significant growth in terms of eCommerce diffusion
and fast delivery technologies. Interesting to notice that relevant portion of first
authors come also from Netherlands (13 percent), Germany (10 percent), France
(8 percent) and UK (8 percent), as these regions are the most developed
European ones in this field.
In terms of methodologies used, most papers present analytical or
mathematical models (27 percent), but there are also many case studies (21
percent). A significant portion also presents conceptual models and frameworks
(19 percent) or simulations (19 percent). For what concerns the remaining
methodologies, some papers are literature reviews aimed at representing the
state-of-the-art of scientific research on a certain topic (8 percent), while some
others are based on data collected from surveys (6 percent).
With regard to content, several interesting areas of research were identified.
Specifically, 27 percent of papers deal with the theme of delivery scheduling and
routing arrangement in order to optimize couriers’ daily job; 23 percent address
the topic of last-mile delivery in different aspects (i.e. alternatives of network
design with the aim of reducing failed first-time deliveries, alternatives of
transportation means in order to make faster deliveries or introduction of new
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
61
information technologies for optimizing couriers’ delivery performances); 17
percent deal with overall supply chain structure, looking at the business and
operational models applied by operators along the whole chain; 13 percent of
contributions concentrate on the study of activities internal to distribution
centers, which are storage and picking; 12 percent gives a general overview of
actual couriers’ and logistics operators’ trends, with the aim of providing a
practical perspective of the state-of-the-art of eCommerce logistics; lastly,
residual attention is paid to the distribution structure of companies (4 percent)
and to performance assessment of e-operations (4 percent).
After a general content analysis, articles were first classified according to a
two-dimensional approach in which the first variable taken into consideration is
the speed of the delivery process (from order receipt to item delivery to end
customer, so corresponding to the order cycle time) and the second variable is
the type of activity and/or activities addressed in the paper. For what concerns
the first axis, four classes were identified: fast deliveries (not defined in a unique
way, but expressed by a number of different examples, in any case always staying
within two or maximum three hours for the whole process to be carried out);
same day deliveries (which have a more clear definition: they have to be delivered
by the end of the day and within a given period after receiving the order); 24
hours deliveries (for which the whole process is performed by the end of the day
following order submission; also called next day deliveries); others (the residual
portion of delivery options, going beyond the next day delivery limit and taking
more than two days to be carried out). While dealing with the second variable,
three categories have been defined: picking (if the only activity addressed in the
paper is picking or at maximum storage, in any case just order preparation
activities occurring inside distribution centers); delivery (if on the contrary the
only activity analyzed in the paper is the shipment from the distribution center to
the customer’s doorstep); picking + delivery (if both activities are tackled, in a
more comprehensive approach).
More than a half of papers (54 percent) belong to “others” category,
expressing the fact that this category is the one having seen the wider research
development, even thanks to the fact that these “slow” delivery options are the
ones being performed by almost every company and being in place for many
years. The fact that among these papers, large majority is represented by
mathematical models (36 percent), conceptual frameworks (18 percent) and
simulations (14 percent) is again a proof of the widespread diffusion of these
delivery methods, so as to allow the development of a wide framework of
theorizations and algorithms. By looking also at the activity addressed, half of
“others” papers deal with delivery activity only, while the remaining half is
uniformly spread between papers addressing picking activity and contributions
about picking and delivery together.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
62
Moving on, the other three speed categories contain pretty much the same
number of papers: in fact, a 15 percent of contributions belong to 24 hours
category, 17 percent stays within the same day class and 13 percent belongs to fast
delivery category. The most important classes are the ones dealing with fast and
same day deliveries. While clusters addressing delivery activity count an
acceptable number of contributions (five in case of fast delivery, six in the class of
same day and five for what concerns 24 hours process), clusters addressing only
picking or picking + delivery are really scarcely populated: in fact, we can find
just one paper in the “picking + delivery-fast” quadrant, three in the “picking +
delivery-same day” and two in the “picking + delivery-24 hours” quadrant; even
less numerous papers deal with picking activity: only one belongs to fast
quadrant, no one in the same day quadrant and again one in the 24 hours
quadrant.
Then, a second two-dimensional classification was carried out, using as first
variable the speed of the logistics process (divided into “fast” logistics for
processes performed in less than 24 hours or “standard” logistics when logistics
processes requiring more time to be performed are involved) and as second
variable the field of application for the aforementioned logistics processes. For
what concerns this last variable, in the first group logistics is explicitly applied to
the field of eCommerce; in the second cluster the addressed theme is customer
experience related to logistics processes performances in all the channels of
commerce; the third group refers to papers about both fields, so customer
experience in the eCommerce industry specificly. Most of these contributions (34
out of 52, corresponding to 65 percent) address logistics in its general terms,
without a reference to the process timing. On the contrary, 18 papers
(corresponding to the remaining 35 percent) deal with fast logistics and so
processes which are carried out within twenty-four hours. Going into details, two
of these writings are about next day deliveries; half of these papers (9 out of 18)
deal instead with same day processes; finally, 7 out of the 18 articles deepen the
theme of fast deliveries (i.e. requiring just few hours to be performed). We can
first notice that contributions about processes performed at high speed are surely
less numerous than standard ones; but we can consider it as at least relevant,
especially since same day and fast deliveries are quite sufficiently addressed
topics. Starting so the classification from the most copious group (i.e. articles
about logistics without time limitations), we can notice that big part of them (20
out of 34 papers, corresponding to 59 percent) refer to the field of eCommerce; it
represents a quite widely investigated field along the whole supply chain process
(in fact, all operational activities of picking, delivery and both together are
addressed) and for many different types of players. The second topic addressed is
customer experience: 8 out of the 34 papers about traditional logistics
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
63
(corresponding to 23 percent) deal with the assessment of service performances
not exclusively applied to eCommerce but also to more traditional channels; they
are not so copious and they mainly present algorithms enabling couriers to
optimize their delivery paths; there is a lack of contributions about employable
technologies and/or means of transport which can be perceived as a value-adding
solution also in the final customers’ eyes and moreover, picking activity is almost
forgotten. The left 6 papers out of the 34 about standard logistics (i.e. 18 percent)
concern together customer experience and eCommerce fields; almost all activities
of the supply chain are tackled, but a significant portion of contributions comes
from e-grocery business and a lot of information should be collected for what
concerns other strongly developed industries in eCommerce context (e.g.
informatics and consumer electronics, clothing, etc.).
Moving to the second cluster, the one of papers about fast logistics (which are
18 out of the total 52 as previously written), 8 of them (corresponding to 45
percent) deal with the industry of eCommerce; in these contributions, not only
all the supply chain activities’, but also all the kinds of fast delivery services are
tackled with a certain interest, especially the most innovative ones working at
highest speed (in fact, two papers address same day deliveries and four relate to
even faster services). The second theme addressed is customer experience: 6 out
of the 18 papers about fast logistics (corresponding to 33 percent) do not relate to
eCommerce business only, but assess performances of supply chain activities for
orders fulfillment in traditional industries. Even if almost all research methods
can be found within this cluster of papers, a strong limitation can be noticed: no
articles relate to the picking activity or to the whole order fulfillment process
(from picking to delivery), meaning that services described in these contributions
do not take into consideration the time required for order preparation before the
delivery takes place. In addition, just one case of company being able to really
operate at high speed (i.e. within two or three hours) is reported; the most
addressed topic is the one of same day delivery, very well investigated and
deepened so as to allow the development of general models or frameworks on it;
a strong contribution of very innovative delivery companies’ examples is missed.
The last cluster of papers about fast logistics deal with customer experience
applied to the industry of eCommerce and it consists of 4 papers (corresponding
to 22 percent of the overall articles on fast services); here picking activity finds
stronger attention and in many cases the whole operative supply chain is
investigated; however, most contributions (75 percent of them) relate to services
carried out within one day and only one paper addresses faster services; in
addition, this last paper is about delivery activity, so no contributions of overall
fulfillment processes performed in very fast times are provided.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
64
This review has both academic and practical implications. From an academic
viewpoint, it contributes to knowledge in this topic by providing a classification
of the existing body of research for what concerns B2C eCommerce fast
deliveries, specifically looking at the management of logistics activities in order
to put in place such fast systems. This viewpoint is particularly valuable since it is
very difficult to know how this phenomenon has spread among companies and
the characteristics of its diffusion according to different geographies, population
densities, logistics operators and players, etc.
From a practical perspectives, this paper contributes to the understanding of
B2C eCommerce fast deliveries from different viewpoints. It communicates the
last trends of this eCommerce environment, especially the ones regarding order
cycle times, to practitioners who are still in this industry and to the ones who
want to enter the business, giving them the opportunity of staying competitive or
even reaching a higher development with respect to most competitors.
In addition, it provides practitioners with a more clear definition of what fast
delivery processes are and in which categories they can be classified; this can be a
valid contribution since it was not easy to find a specific definition of the terms
“same day”, “next day” and especially “fast” deliveries.
The review contributes also to understand, through a two-dimensional
classification, the actual level of development of the topic, presenting a picture of
all the relevant articles on the subject and allowing to focus on most important
ones. First, classifying papers according to the activity/activities they address has
helped identifying which activities need to be tackled when a company wants to
rearrange their operations and manage their supply chain; it allows also
companies to understand the difference in the approach they have to apply when
addressing one single activity (e.g. picking alone or delivery alone) or when
dealing with a more comprehensive process (picking + delivery): a wide set of
algorithms and mathematical models is easily applicable to a single activity and
allows to optimize it obtaining measurable results in terms of time minimization;
on the contrary, only conceptual tips derived from best practices of ground-
breaking practitioners represent a useful tool for improvement of longer
processes, taking into consideration more steps of the supply chain together.
Second, classifying contributions according to the speed of the delivery process
allows companies to know which practices they should concentrate on in order to
follow industry trends; it is also useful to understand if a difference exists among
technologies and tools belonging to each cluster (i.e. tools and business models
applied by companies to develop fast delivery options are different from the ones
allowing to perform next day delivery). A company, through the classification of
real examples, could find the operations’ design that best suits its features and
implement the related supply chain strategy.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
65
Although a good picture of the extant literature has been formed, this review
presents a number of issues which have not been adequately addressed yet or
which have not been considered at all. This represents a limitations especially for
practitioners, who are not able to completely understand which moves to
implement in order to find and keep a position in this increasing developing
environment.
First, the analyzed literature refers primarily to few industries such as grocery,
food in general and consumer electronics, while other sectors such as clothing,
books, cosmetics have not been examined at all. This represents a gap, especially
for what concerns clothing industry, because it is the one having seen the highest
growth in sales in the last years and also having experienced a significant growth
of companies approaching same day or next day deliveries, especially in big cities
and in case of last-minute orders (e.g. on Christmas or other holiday occasions);
additionally, its supply chain is of relevant complexity.
Second, most attention is paid to the management of the delivery activity
alone, from the moment in which the order leaves the distribution center to the
end customer’s reception of it; even if it is surely a very complex activity to be
performed and its last portion, the one occurring inside cities and having the
name of last-mile, is complex and the one representing the service performance
directly experienced by the customer, other activities are part of the delivery
process too and should be tackled with more attention: picking has an impact too
on the overall order cycle time and for sure a comprehensive approach which
considers both picking and delivery could get to larger benefits.
Third, while contributions about cycle times of more than two days are
common, a little has been written about faster processes. Longer delivery options
have now been overcome by same day and next day deliveries, which are
becoming (or already are, in more developed areas) industry standards
(Hausmann et al., 2014); this means that a lot of cases are spreading and these
practices need to be deeply studied and carefully analyzed as they could provide
very interesting insights and drive future development of the business-to-
consumer eCommerce field.
Lastly, too much space is occupied by empirical contributions (i.e. case
studies and surveys), especially for what concerns fast and same day delivery
classes: a wider investigation in the field will allow academics to gather a relevant
number of data and examples so as to develop articles of more general validity,
which could be used by practitioners as frameworks in order to guide their
operative strategies.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
66
3. Research objective and methodology
3.1 Objective
The objective of the thesis is the one of analyzing the state-of-the-art of
delivery initiatives set up by top retailers operating nowadays in the eCommerce
market in order to overcome limitations driven out by the previous literature
research.
The first limit was the one of having too many theoretical contributions which
provide mathematical models and/or simulative algorithms not easily linkable to
single cases of real companies because of context constraints and not so
commonly applicable; in addition, by looking at the speed of the delivery process,
these contributions deal for the biggest part with “slow” deliveries, requiring not
less than two days to be performed and they do not represent an interesting body
of research in most innovative environments. In order to solve these issues, this
thesis aims at finding top web retailers and classifying their services in order to
obtain insights from practices of immediate application in the practical world;
moreover, “slow” services won’t be considered at all and the focus will be just on
operators able to perform the whole process of order fulfillment at maximum
within the next day from order reception.
Secondly, the classification of activities tackled in literature articles showed a
strong presence of writings addressing delivery activity alone and a barely
sufficient number of papers involving also picking activity (alone or together with
delivery in a more comprehensive approach). The thesis does not want just to
focus on the business of couriers and logistics operators able to carry out
deliveries in little time considering only the process of physical items’
distribution, from the moment in which responsibility of products to be shipped
is assigned to couriers to the moment of customers’ reception of goods at their
doorstep (or all the available alternatives to home delivery). On the contrary, the
object of interest is the world of merchants, the retailers selling their products
online, receiving orders from web customers and managing the whole process
until the items reach final consumers’ hands; in this way, also activities occurring
within the walls of merchants’ warehouses are taken into consideration and
speed of the process is not related only to final delivery but to the whole order
fulfillment activities. In fact, we cannot consider of really experiencing next day,
same day or few hours processes if we just consider timing of the shipment, but
we should have the whole process staying within these time constraints.
Another theme regards the nation to which authors belong: as described in
the previous pages, literature writers come in bigger portion from China and US,
with a relevant presence also of UK and then other European countries such as
Germany and France. The point of the thesis is the one of investigating trends
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
67
according to their geographical presence and find out if any differences exist
among practices implemented in diverse countries. In addition, research
coverage is extended so as to consider not only single nations alone but their
development with respect to the one of the other most innovative countries of
their continent. In this way, not only American, Chinese and British practitioners’
processes will be studied, but Chinese situation will be compared with the one of
other compatibly developed South-East countries (i.e. India, Japan and South-
Korea) and similarly British practices will be analyzed together with the ones of
mostly developed European countries in the eCommerce context (i.e. France,
Germany, Italy and Spain). The aim is double: first of all, to find out if a
correspondence exists between most active countries in terms of provision of
literature contributions and most innovative ones for what concerns
implementation of fast eCommerce practices; second of all, to analyze
characteristics of services offered by different merchants within the same country
and then also from one country to another in order to find out if particular
similarities and/or discrepancies exist.
Additional topic to be tackled regards the commodity sectors to which
literature papers relate: as something has been found in literature about Grocery
and Informatics, but little or no information on other industries which can surely
present instead a relevant amount of real merchants (especially for what
concerns Clothing retailers which are much diffused at a worldwide level),
another objective of this research is the one of finding out which are the mostly
developed sectors in relation to eCommerce in general and then in particular to
fast logistics offers.
Lastly, the theoretical nature of the majority of papers analyzed implies a lack
of practical details of the services: if it was easy to find mathematical models for
optimization of vehicle routing inside urban traffic, little if no attention was paid
to technologies and transportation means employed in the process. Interesting
objective of the thesis instead is the one of going in depth in the study of delivery
services and describing the state-of-the-art of technologies implemented for the
provision of fast deliveries.
In conclusion, the objective of this thesis is to provide an updated picture of
most relevant cases of web retailers able to provide next day, same day or fast
deliveries up to now and analyze their features so as to build clusters and find out
similarities and differences among the offers. In this way not only the attention to
really fast services in their whole (focusing also on the first activities performed
just after order reception in addition to final delivery) will be brought to a higher
extent, but also the study will go in depth considering commodities sector,
geographical coverage and technological characteristics of different services
offered.
This whole thought can be summarized in the following research questions:
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
68
1) Which are the most relevant real examples of merchants operating in
the eCommerce at a worldwide level?
2) How many of these merchants carry out their e-fulfillment process not
going beyond the next day from order reception? And how many
among them offer even faster options?
3) Which commonalities and/or differences exist among initiatives
belonging to different geographical areas?
4) Which commodity sectors are interested by this kind of initiatives? Are
there any commonalities and/or differences in the initiatives’ feature
among the industries?
5) What are the latest trends about the main features of logistics activities
and about the technologies employed for the provision of this kind of
services?
3.2 Methodology
In order to carry out this kind of analysis, as first thing the field of interest has
been defined: examples of real merchants actually operating in the eCommerce
channel and offering delivery options staying within the boundaries of twenty-
four hours for delivery to end customers.
Stated this, the research has been performed in a first moment by accessing
the digital edition of a guide on top 2013 e-retailers; it is called “Internet retailer –
portal to eCommerce intelligence” and it provides profiles, statistics, contacts and
analyses of the largest retailers in a certain geographical area. In particular, three
versions of this guide have been consulted, according to the different regions of
interest:
Asia 500 Guide Digital Edition 2013: providing information on the 500
largest retail web sites in Asia and the Pacific Rim, all ranked by annual
eCommerce sales;
Top 500 Guide Digital Edition 2013 (Europe): collecting business data,
profiles, rankings and analyses of Europe’s 500 largest retail web sites
ranked by annual eCommerce sales;
Top 500 Guide Digital Edition 2013: listing profiles, statistics and analyses
of America’s 500 largest retail web sites ranked by annual eCommerce
sales.
All the aforementioned guides, in addition to articles extensively describing
single cases of particular attention in the online channel scene, provide lists of
top eCommerce merchants for the three continents according to different
features: top merchants ranked by business category, also referred to as merchant
type (i.e. web only, consumer brand manufacturers, retail chains and catalog/call
centers), sites with the biggest growth in dollars in the year of analysis, fastest
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
69
growing e-retailers (still referring to development from the beginning to the end
of 2013) again by business category, top retailers ranked by sales’ volume (always
considering dollars as unit of measure) and others.
Among all of these rankings, the one which has been considered as the most
interesting according to this thesis’ objective provided a list of top web retailers
ranked by principal market, categorizing retail sites by country of belonging and
by principal market they serve. In this way, it was easy to focus just on those
countries representing a higher source of interest as came out from literature
review’s conclusions and to neglect all the cases from nations considered as
“minor” in the actual environment of fast home deliveries for online orders.
So, considering each guide alone:
from Asia 500 Guide Digital Edition 2013, China, India, Japan and South
Korea rankings were consulted;
for what concerns Top 500 Guide Digital Edition 2013 (Europe), the
analysis concentrated on United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and
Spain;
lastly, as regards Top 500 Guide Digital Edition 2013, the top 500 Guide
ranking was taken into consideration as it only refers to American e-
retailers and provides a classification on the basis of web sales’ volume,
monthly visits on the web site, customers’ conversion rate and average
order ticket.
For Asian and European countries, top 25 players in the ranking were
identified for further research (with the exception of Spain, which was a bit
poorer in terms of relevant online players and the ranking only involved 14
retailers); for US instead, the field was so bigger than the other countries that the
analysis was extended to the group of first 60 actors in the national ranking. So
for each nation, all websites belonging to the group of identified top merchants
were searched on the Internet and deeply studied, with a particular attention to
the process of orders’ fulfillment and final delivery to customers.
In order to carry out a complete analysis and to obtain comparable
information for further discussion and comparison, a database was created in
which some very specific features were collected from any initiative in any
country. The information collected, which describe deep down features of each
single initiative, were:
number in the national ranking: as previously stated, it goes from 1 to 25
for the majority of rankings, with the exception of Spain (in which it stops
to 14) and of US (ranging between 1 and 60); it allowed to have an idea of
their relevance inside their country of belonging in terms of sales;
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
70
merchant name: its proper name or the name of the online initiative in
case the company found in the ranking was the owner of different
businesses in different channels;
service provider name: filled in case the merchant provided explicit
information on a single logistics operator which it resorted to;
country: of belonging of the merchant, representing also its major market;
the alternative is among one of the nine countries already presented;
Dot Com/traditional: variable telling if the merchant was born as an
online retailer from scratch or if it was firstly a retailer operating in the
traditional sales’ channel and then enlarging its coverage by developing
also the web business;
pure player/multichannel: describing if the player operates only in the
eCommerce or if its business extends to many sales’ channels (almost in
every case, when a merchant is Dot Com it is also a pure player, while if it
is a traditional retailer it is multichannel too; so these two variables are in
some way strictly related)
desktop/mobile: it tells if the retailer has a website working for desktops
or if a mobile application has been developed in order to allow easy
shopping also from mobile devices;
commodity sector: sector in which the player operates, identifying in a
precise manner the type of products sold and moved during the service’
supply; we have Clothing, Cosmetics & Perfumery, General, Grocery,
Home & Furniture, Informatics & general electronics, Publishing sectors
Figure 3 - extract from database: merchants' number, name, service provider, country, market channels and web technology
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
71
and then other industries of minor presence among which we can find
Childcare, Drugs, Eyewear, Flowers, Music stores and Office supplies;
time for the delivery service: considering services which take more time
than what represents our interest area, we can find different hours’ ranges
surpassing the 24 hours for service provision (e.g. web retailers delivering
in between 48 and 96 hours, others in 48 hours, others between 24 and 72
hours or between 24 and 48 hours); moving instead towards faster
services, we first find merchants operating within the next day or the next
morning (if they are able to assure delivery within lunch time of the day
after order submission); then we have same day operators; in the end,
there is a cluster of websites offering deliveries which do not overcome 6
hours for the whole service provision (some declare of taking less than 6
hours for delivery but without specifying a fixed time, while some others
assure services operating in between 1 and 2 hours or even taking less than
1 hour to be performed). Among all the websites examined, we found also
merchants not offering express services at all (i.e. typically serving
customers in not less than 2 or 3 days and even more), that have been
classified as “non fast” and for which data collection activity has stopped at
this stage as they do not represent the focus of the research. In addition,
there were also websites which were impossible to access and about which
no information could be found even searching through the more
traditional web browsers, together with sites of retailers providing services
and not physical items (and so not arranging any picking and delivery
activity for their business’ nature) and finally websites shut down (it could
be because after some test time they closed the online channel resorting to
more traditional ones or because they went bankrupt); all these cases were
obviously excluded from the database;
additional time information: filled in case a website provided precise
information on the average delivery time or on the specific time taken by
each activity along the whole process;
hour limit in order to get on-time delivery: maximum hour for order
submission to be sure that the merchant will be able to provide goods by
the specific time explicated in the initiative (valid only in case of same day
services or at most in few next day options, but not always specified);
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
72
delivery timeframes: time windows in which operators are going to
perform home delivery (information found just in some websites);
cost type: the delivery service has usually an own cost which adds up to
the one of bought items; this cost can be fixed, variable, fixed but
becoming free once reached a certain expense for the goods (and the same
can happen in case of variable cost) or in few cases offered for free no
matter the expense’s amount;
criteria taken into consideration for variable cost determination (obviously
only in case the delivery service has a variable cost or variable but free by
reaching a certain shopping amount);
exact value of the delivery expense (expressed in the local currency and
only when the fee is fixed or at most variable but if its computation is
precisely explained on the site);
exact value of items’ expense to be reached in order to get free delivery
(only when expected and again expressed in the local currency);
minimum expense imposed for order submission (just in few cases);
Figure 4 - extract from database: retailers' sector, delivery time and other time features
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
73
price peculiarities: filled only if some peculiarities exist (e.g. a phone
number is provided and only by calling it the customer can know the exact
delivery expense or money-back guarantee is assured to customers if the
order is not delivered by the promised time window or if a maximum
number of articles which can be bought within one order exist, etc.);
international coverage: binomial variable which is “yes” if the service
concerned can be offered at an international level (i.e. in more than one
country) or “no” in the opposite case;
national coverage: “yes” if the delivery service in question has a national
geographical coverage (so every area of the country can be reached within
the same time window) or “no” contrarily;
local coverage: again binomial variable represented by a “yes” if the service
is only able to be provided in a limited local area (typically involving few
cities or even smaller); obviously this variable cannot be a “no”, otherwise
the service couldn’t exist;
coverage area: descriptive information exactly defining the local area of
service provision (only in case the service is not able to go beyond local
boundaries);
Figure 5 - extract from database: delivery cost and its characteristics
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
74
logistics type (internal/outsourcing/crowd-sourcing): variable identifying
if all the logistics activities are performed internally by the retailer itself
(or at most by a logistics spin-off appositely created for serving a specific
e-retailer and belonging to the same owning group) or if they are left to an
external operator found on the logistics market or lastly, if they are
performed according to the crowd-sourcing model (i.e. there is an external
entity which doesn’t operate as a physical distributor owning assets and
fleets and having couriers working under its direct dependence, but it only
works as an inter-change platform, collecting independent couriers who
work autonomously with their own transportation means and connecting
them with retailers in search of someone to perform home delivery);
preferred logistics operator: filled if a single external operator or a single
crowd-sourcing platform is exclusively resorted to by a web merchant;
service name: descriptive field reporting the name of the specific service
(only if this name exists; in general it is present when a retailer intends to
distinguish its express/fast service from the more standard one);
transportations means’ peculiarity: filled in case a web merchant (or in its
place the provider of the logistics service) resorts to a very specific type of
means only. We can find cases in which more traditional means as vans or
refrigerated vans only are adopted; then we have cases in which the
preferred vehicle utilized is the car. Moving to two-wheeled vehicles we
can find retailers employing indiscriminately bicycles and motorbikes,
while others provide their couriers exclusively with bicycles; there is also
the eco-friendly option in which couriers use electric bicycles for
performing final delivery. In the end moving to air transportation we have
Figure 6 - extract from database: geographic coverage and delivery area's details
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
75
cases in which the airplane is the only mean utilized or innovative
merchants putting in place delivery by drones;
click & collect in-store: binomial variable which is a “yes” in case the web
retailer offers items’ collection in store as an alternative to home delivery
and a “no” in the opposite case;
parcel locker’s pickup: “yes” if the merchant offers an alternative to
standard home delivery in which customers go and pickup their own stuff
from parcel lockers in which items have been previously positioned by
logistics operators; “no” if on the contrary this alternative doesn’t exist;
other collection point: again binomial variable represented by a “yes” if
another alternative to home delivery different from the two
aforementioned ones exist, “no” contrarily;
additional information on last-mile alternative: descriptive variable in
which all information regarding every delivery alternative offered by a
retailer (and explained in its website) are collected; it provides the
alternative description (in case it doesn’t involve in-store collection and/or
parcel locker) (e.g. convenience stores agreed upon collection service with
the retailer and having a terminal dedicated to collection of online orders;
or terminals belonging to a particular logistics operator allied with the
retailer such as UPS, Colissimo, Chronopost, Hermes points, etc.; or again
delivery in the store’s car park or directly inside vehicle’s trunk; etc.), the
hourly limit for order submission in order to get the alternative or the
specific time window taken by the alternative to be performed;
real-time tracking: binomial variable which is a “yes” in case a merchant
provides on its website (or at most on the one of its logistics operator) the
Figure 7 - extract from database: logistics service type, operator, name and vehicles used
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
76
opportunity of tracking order’s moves in real-time so as to have complete
and continuous visibility on its journey; it is a “no” if this option is not
available;
choice of the day/timeframe of delivery: it is a “yes” if customers have the
opportunity of choosing an exact day or an exact time window for order
reception and a “no” if they don’t have this opportunity;
timeframe duration: providing information on the length of the time
window which can be chosen by customers (of course available only when
the previous field reports a “yes” value and not even in any of these cases);
pre-delivery contacts: descriptive variable in which, if present (otherwise
the value is “no”), the moment in which customers have the opportunity of
being directly in contact with the courier carrying their order with
him/her is identified. It could be just a notification to confirm that an
order has been received or a notification of goods pickup in the warehouse
and then of shipment; or it can be the opportunity of speaking with the
courier before he/she starts its delivery tour in order to arrange all the
details for an efficient delivery; or it can even be the option of receiving,
together with delivery details, also courier’s name and image to make the
delivery process always easier;
information on pre-delivery contacts: it reports the nature of contacts with
logistics operators and the technological mean utilized for the
communication (e.g. call, e-mail, text or notification on the website and
details about the exact time in which this communication takes place); of
course this field is filled in only when a pre-delivery contact occurs;
Figure 8 - extract from database: last-mile alternatives and real-time tracking
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
77
useful websites: link/s of merchants’ websites or articles from which all the
previous information were collected.
After having collected all these information and filled in the database, most
interesting cases (i.e. the ones dealing with services not going beyond the next
day for being performed) were focused and their features were analyzed and
different database fields have been crossed so as to get insights about the actual
situation firstly by addressing one country at a time (single-variable analysis) and
then splitting also the analysis by commodity sector (double-variable analysis).
These numerous analyses got to some interesting conclusions about the state-of-
the-art of real companies’ delivery initiatives in fast eCommerce environment.
Figure 9 - extract from database: day/time choice and duration, contacts before delivery and useful websites
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
78
4. Empirical analysis
4.1 First empirical analysis: single-variable classifications
4.1.1 Global context
4.1.1.1 Merchants’ sample size
Table 100 - global merchants' quantity
Starting from the complete database with all the
websites object of the census, it is made of 275 web
retailers found in the national rankings; as previously
described, they are 25 for most countries, with the
exception of Spain with 14 cases censed and US with
61 rows because the first retailer is present two times
with very different business offers (it is Amazon,
which is considered one time for its Amazon Prime
Now business applied to the General sector and the
second time for Amazon Fresh Grocery service).
However among these censed merchants we can observe a portion of retailers out
of any interest; indeed, we can find that the traditional French retailer Group 3si,
operating in the General sector, which had enlarged its business by adding the
development in the online channel, after a little time has not found economic
convenience in pursuing a multichannel strategy and have decided to close its
eCommerce website. Then five merchants belonging to the rankings do not sell
physical items and so they do not have to perform any logistics activity for
customers’ order fulfillment: they are three Informatics companies selling
software solutions (the American Symantec and Micros and the South Korean
Ahnlab), still an Informatics online operator that acts just as a collector of
information from different merchants (the Chinese Sc4888.com) and the German
retailer Arcandor, which is classified in the Others industry because it sells
obligations. To follow, we can find six traditional multichannel retailers which
are business-to-business operators and so their logistics processes are completely
different from the ones of players having to perform home deliveries to final
single customers; they are five coming from US ranking (Office Max, W.W.
Granger, MSC Industrial Supply belonging to Others category and CDW
Corporation, PC Connection operating in the Informatics and general electronics
sector) and the German grocer Metro. Going on, 18 of the merchants included in
the 2013 rankings submitted to census have gone bankrupt and up to now have
closed their business: no cases of this type of players can be found in the US and
just one in the UK (the Dot Com merchant Rakuten, previously operating in the
Country Total
China 25 France 25 Germany 25 India 25 Italy 25 Japan 25 South Korea 25 Spain 14 UK 25 USA 61
Total 275
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
79
General industry and staying in fourteenth position in the national ranking);
more cases can be found in the rest of Europe: we can list jewelry French
traditional retailer Bijoudumois (thirteenth place in its national ranking), Spanish
informatics traditional merchant Bonacuista (fourteenth position) and three
cases of informatics Italian operators (all staying in relatively high place of the
Italian ranking, between fifth and thirteenth), multichannel Eldo Megastore
which have faced bankruptcy in 2014 and the two Dot Com actors YouBuy.it and
Bow (the last one carried into ePrice business through acquisition); however, the
most relevant portion of shut down businesses can be found in the Asian
countries: just one case can be found in Japan (Ec-current, previously occupying
the fifth position in the ranking in terms of sales’ volumes) and in South Korea
(Vanilla Mint clothes’ retailer in 18th position); three are instead the Chinese merchants having experienced business’ closure (general 360Mart in eight place, again general Mailebei in 13th place and 51sheyuan that was located at the end of the ranking); lastly, the highest number has been faced in India with seven merchants shutting down their businesses (Buytheprice, 100bestbuy, Zovi, Inkfruit, Seventy MM, Indiaplaza, Be Stylish that occupied places between the tenth and the twenty-third in 2013 ranking).
Table 101 - global merchants'excluded non-interesting cases
Overall, they are 30 websites which for their diverse reasons do not have the
prerequisites for being included in the database, so the real number of merchants
addresses in the coming classifications is 245.
4.1.1.2 Breakdown by channel, web technology and commodity sector
Dot Com/traditional pure player/multichannel Total
Dot Com pure player 94
traditional multichannel 151
Total 245 Table 102 - global merchants' market channel
Moving onto the next variable, we can see that 94 merchants are Dot Com,
while a larger stake is composed by traditional retailers (151); exactly the same
numbers come out from the categorization of cases into pure players or
multichannel, implying that every company born as a Dot Com one keeps the
online business alone, while traditional retailers expanded to eCommerce are by
definition multichannel as they keep also the initial ones. This analysis means
that even if a big portion of actors are born as online players and have built their
Country Total
China 21 France 23 Germany 23 India 18 Italy 22 Japan 24 South Korea 23 Spain 13 UK 24 USA 54
Total 245
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
80
business from scratch by jumping into the eCommerce channel, the majority was
born in the past as a retailer in more traditional channels and then has enlarged
the business by adding the development of the web market. Starting as a pure
web player implies the opportunity of developing an ad-hoc structure for
fulfillment of online orders, keeping low initial investments but a widespread
diffusion in the market considering the easiness of being known through the
Internet; this business model facilitates continuous improvement and inclination
to innovate the service and pursue most recent market trends. On the contrary,
companies in place for years as traditional ones, for sure have a stronger and
more steady presence in the environment as they enter also the online channel
(reducing the risk of being cannibalized by other bigger actors and of failure), but
they have to manage completely different models in the same time, often
compromising their attitude towards active management of eCommerce (in fact,
they often outsource the whole business or at least the logistics activities to
external operators) and internal development of innovative practices.
The following field is the one analyzing the type of technology supporting the
merchant’s website: 85 retailers provide their websites through connection from
desktops, while 160 have made available to customers an application accessible
from all mobile devices. The mobile version for sure makes easier the website’s
consultation at any time and increases customers’ willingness to submit orders;
but additionally, provides a stronger connection between the retailer (or its
courier if it is external) and the final consumer: in fact, mobile application will be
checked with more frequency than website on desktops, making the
communication flow more efficient and faster for orders’ tracking and
notifications on its status, reducing also the risk of having failed deliveries. In this
light, mobile access is a good tool for making fast delivery services spreading and
improving.
desktop/mobile Total
desktop 85
mobile 160
Total 245
Table 103 - global merchants' web technology
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
81
Going to the commodity
sector, we can observe that the
biggest portion of cases belongs to
the Clothing industry (61 out of
the 245 options under census,
corresponding to 25 percent),
followed by a similar quantity of
merchants coming from General
sector (i.e. retailers selling in the
same time a large amount of very
different items) (49 examples, corresponding to 20
percent). 48 (i.e. 19 percent of the total) are the cases belonging to Informatics &
general electronics sector. After this, there is a big jump in terms of size, passing
to Grocery sector which comprises 20 merchants (corresponding to 8 percent). It
is followed by Publishing industry, made of 15 cases (i.e. 6 percent) and then
Cosmetics & Perfumery with 10 examples (i.e. 4 percent). In closure, we can find 4
merchants coming from the Home and Furniture sector. A relevant portion of
cases (38, corresponding to 16 percent) are in the Others sector, collecting a vast
quantity of industries which alone counts a little, so not so many useful
information can be extrapolated from this group; however among theme we can
find Childcare, Drugs, Eyewear, Flowers, Music stores and Office supplies. From
this analysis we can find out that more developed industries in the online
channel are Clothing and Informatics, the one having developed first and having
gained high market shares until now. Another very relevant sector is General one,
comprising big merchants who have not specified their business by selling a
determined type of items, but instead have found their strength and their
strategy in enlarging as much as possible the offer. Even if separated by a relevant
amount of cases, an important place is occupied also by Grocery and Publishing
sectors, which are not as affirmed as Clothing and Informatics but are gaining
share in the eCommerce market.
4.1.1.3 Split by delivery speed
The following database’s field is the delivery time and many different values
can be found. In increasing order of time needed for order fulfillment, we have
one only merchant able to carry out the whole process in less than one hour: it is
the Japanese Dot Com retailer Rakuten with its express service “Rakubin”, whose
average service time is 60 minutes but in many cases is also able of offering faster
deliveries until a minimum amount of time required of 20 minutes. Then we can
find a group of seven retailers whose delivery services stay in the range of one-
two hours in order to be carried out: the fastest is the French merchant Carrefour
Commodity sector Total
Home & Furniture 4
Cosmetics & Perfumery 10
Publishing 15
Grocery 20
Others 38
Informatics & general electronics 48
General 49
Clothing 61
Total 245
Table 104 - global merchants' sector
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
82
which performs a process lasting one hour overall and called “Carrefour Now”. A
bit slower (always referring to average timings), the following five examples of
retailers whose order fulfillment processes stay between one and two hours in
order to be performed: the US Amazon with its Prime Now and Air options is
able to serve its customers by
overcoming a little the one hour
timeframe (even if the Air alternative
can reach in some situations minimums
of 30 minutes); second, the French
informatics retailer Darty declares of
being able to reach its final consumers
in an average time of exactly 78 minutes
by exploiting the crowd-sourcing
logistics model offered by Colisweb; the
third case is the one of Spanish El Corte Inglès, delivering its general items in
between one and two hours (service called “Click & Express”) or offering the
opportunity of selecting the exact delivery time but enlarging the available time
window to all the same day of order issuing; as fourth we find UK grocer
Sainsbury that takes advantage of an internally owned application called Chop
Chop in order to better manage couriers’ flows and to provide services always
lasting less than two hours; lastly, but not in terms of importance, Indian
informatics retailer The Mobile Store offers a pilot service called FED (“Fastest
Express Delivery”) not going beyond a two hours time window. Closing the 1-2h
cluster, just one retailer, the German Conrad that operates in the Informatics and
general electronics industry, affirms of being able to serve its customers in two
hours thanks to the directly owned branch Tiramizoo which has been
deliberately built up for accomplishing the retailer’s logistics activities.
After this, there are three players who are not able to offer services staying within
a so limited time window, but can however locate themselves in a range that do
not overcome six hours and so, together with all the previously mentioned
examples, can be considered to perform “fast” services that distinguish
themselves from the ones offering same day deliveries. All these three merchants
belong to the Informatics and general electronics industry and they are: the
American company Apple, that offers a delivery service with an average time of
four hours to be carried out in San Francisco and New York exploiting Postmates’
crowd-sourcing logistics platform (or considers as alternative the opportunity of
choosing the exact delivery time, but accepting a little slower service that in any
case stays beyond the same day limit); Indian Univercell, which has developed
internally a pilot project for delivering items in four hours in Chennai; lastly, the
Chinese company Jingdong with its Dot Com business 360Buy.com that with its
internal logistics service is able to perform delivery within three hours in six cities
Delivery time Total
< 1h 1
1-2h 7
< 6h 3
same day 51
next morning 5
next day 45
not fast 133
Total 245
Table 105 - global merchants' delivery time
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
83
(while in the rest of the country offers an Overnight service in which issuing the
order by 15:00, customers can receive their products in a three hour time slot
between 19:00 and 22:00). We can so observe that considering all these
aforementioned offers lasting less than six hours, “fast” delivery initiatives are in
total 11 out of the overall 245 cases under census, which represents a very small
portion of all the examined sample (corresponding to a 4 percent only).
Moving to the next value, we can find a considerably more populated group of
examples offering same day services: they are 51, representing the 21 percent of
the total; 16 of them come from US, 6 from UK, 9 from the rest of European
countries analyzed (three from France, two from Germany, two Italian and two
Spanish respectively). However, the biggest portion is represented by Asian cases:
in fact they are 20 overall and they are subdivided among 8 Japanese, 6 Indian, 3
Chinese and 3 South Korean initiatives. All these same day options will be deeply
described in the following analyses split by country.
To follow, we can observe a comparable group of initiatives (50 overall) in
which the order is delivered to customers within the day after order reception;
this group is made of five next morning cases (i.e. the items reach consumers’
home not after 13:00 of the following day with respect to order issuing) and 45
examples of next day deliveries. For what concerns the next morning options,
three of them come from the United Kingdom: there is the merchant of general
items John Lewis providing ordered products between 7:30 and 10:30 if the order
has been received by 20:00 of the preceding day, then the two informatics
retailers Misco and the Dot Com BT Shop (owned by Dabs company) delivering
items by 12:00 of the following day if the order has been received within late
afternoon (within 17:30 for Misco, 18:00 in the case of BT Shop); the other two
initiatives come from French operators: general retailer Rue du Commerce
reaches its customers in the morning in a time window included between 10:00
and 13:00, while informatics merchant LDLC is able to deliver products by 10:00
or by 13:00 according to the city in which it has to operate, but both players need
to have orders received in the first part of afternoon for assuring such a delivery
service (by 14:00 for both). Moving to the 45 next day initiatives, 10 of them
belong to US companies, 11 to British players, 15 to the rest of European
nationalities examined (6 for both France and Germany, 2 in Spain and just one
case from Italy) and 9 options coming from Asian business (5 from Japan, 2 from
South Korea and only one initiative in both India and China). Also these cases
will be more comprehensively tackled in the following split by country.
All cases that belong to categories presented before (i.e. fast, same day and
next day deliveries), which are a total of 112, represent the body of interest of the
thesis because of the limited timings in which these services are performed, so
they are object of further study and they are the only cases categorized and
described in a more deepened manner in the analyses to come.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
84
For what concerns the remaining censed websites, that are 133 and correspond
to 54 percent of the overall 245, they do not represent interesting cases because
they perform delivery services which can be generically categorized as “not fast”.
26 of them belong to American ranking, while in the UK classification we can
find only 3 cases; 51 then are located in all the other European countries (10 from
France, 14 from Germany, 19 from Italy and 9 in Spain) and 53 come from Asia (10
in Japan, 18 in South Korea, 16 in China and 9 in India). Their delivery timings are
quite different, never going below one day and reaching seven, ten or even more
days in some cases; sometimes the delivery activity alone is quite fast but the
activities tacking most of the time or for what no specific information is available
are order picking and packing, while in some cases the opposite case occurs and
the activity lasting most of the time (often many days) is the physical distribution
of the items to final customers. Anyway, the examples are so various and copious
that they will be better explained in the coming analysis that is divided for each
country alone so as to go more in depth with the situation’s details.
4.1.1.4 Service providers
Before moving to the next
paragraph that describes in a more
complete way all the information
collected and organized in the database
through the separation of rankings by
single country, we can observe that
among the overall 245 eCommerce
merchants, just 26 declare of having a
single service provider to whom they
uniquely resort for the final delivery
activities. Among these known
providers, the most utilized service is
the one offered by Deliv (an US crowd-
sourced same day delivery startup,
which bridges the last-mile gap
between multichannel retailers and
their customers) which acts for 6
different merchants; then other most relevant cases are offered still in US by
Amazon (which has developed its own logistics for its business), in Germany by
Hermes (logistics branch of German Otto Group company, opened up in order
not only to serve all the sub-companies of the group in all the different channels,
Service provider Total
Cainiao 1
Chop Chop app 1
Colisweb 1
Deliv/Postmates 1
DHL 1
DPD 1
Dynamex 1
Ekart 1
Google 1
LaPoste 1
NBB courier 1
Tiramizoo 1
Yamato Transport 1
UberRush 2
Amazon 2
Hermes 2
Postmates 2
Deliv 5
Total 26
Table 106 - global merchants' service providers
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
85
but also for acting, to all intents and purposes, as a logistics operator for other
retailers) and again in US by Postmates (same crowd-sourcing nature of Deliv).
We can observe that no single format of service provider exists among most
ground-breaking merchants; but big groups having a very large market share
(number 1 in the ranking both for American Amazon and for German Otto
Group) have found out that the best and easiest way to innovate their service is
the one of building up their own logistics business; this huge investment is made
economically viable thanks to the dimension of company’s market share (and so
sales’ volume) or at least thanks to the opportunity of outsourcing the service to
other merchants, amortizing in this way fixed costs. Different is instead the case
of smaller retailers in the market (8 US companies occupying places between the
third and the fifty-sixth in the ranking and resorting to Deliv and/or Postmates’
services): for them such an investment would be too risky and so they resort to
innovative startups able to stay competitive in the actual scenario thanks to their
logistics models very much “lighter” in terms of assets owned.
4.1.2 United States
Starting from the most copious country, as previously stated the first 60
merchants of American ranking have been submitted to census, an higher
population with respect to the other countries to come; this choice is due to the
fact that the ranking was much more extended than the other ones, as
eCommerce has seen its strongest growth in this territory and the geographic
coverage of United States is so ample with respect to others that of course the
number of relevant initiatives has to be much higher. Moreover, the cases have
become 61 as the first merchant in the ranking, the giant Amazon, is counted two
times due to its development in two diverse industries with such a differentiated
service. Having however excluded two merchants not selling physical product
and so not arranging any handling and/or distribution activities (software’s
sellers Symantec and Micros), together with five business-to-business retailers
not performing home delivery (Office Max, CDW Corporation, W. W. Granger,
MSC Industrial Supply and PC Connection), the size of the studied sample is
equal to 54 merchants.
4.1.2.1 Breakdown by channel, web technology and commodity sector
Dot Com/traditional pure player/multichannel Total
Dot Com pure player 12
traditional multichannel 42
Total 54 Table 107 - US merchants' market channel
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
86
We can observe that only 22 percent of the cases (12 out of the total 54) is
represented by pure players Dot Com, while the large majority is composed by
traditional retailers who have chosen to put in place a multichannel strategy. This
means that in this country not so many are the new players explicitly born for
working in the online channel alone which have in the same time gained a
relevant portion of the market; most of actors found in the first positions of the
ranking by sales’ volume had already affirmed themselves in the traditional
business and then have decided to enlarge the business by adding up
eCommerce, but with a stable economical profile provided by years of existence
and of sales behind.
Then, by looking at the technologic
side, we can see that 13 merchants (i.e.
almost the 24 percent of the total) have
only a website which customers can
access to in order to issue their orders; the
biggest part of retailers (76 percent) have developed an application and provide
so their customers with a mobile access, in order to increase the frequency with
whom final consumers check retailers’ offer, made available by an easier
connection to the site from almost everywhere.
For what regards the
commodity sector, a big part (18
out of 54, corresponding to almost
33 percent) of players belong to
Others category, made of a
collection of very different minor
sectors which is difficult to
analyze due to the different nature
of actors inside of it. Moving so to
more uniform sectors within themselves, the most flourishing one is Clothing,
including 14 merchants (i.e. 26 percent), immediately followed by Informatics
and general electronics industry with its 8 cases (i.e. 15 percent). Separated in
terms of weight inside the ranking but still counting a significant number of
initiatives, we can then find General sector (made of 5 retailers, corresponding to
9 percent of the total), Grocery (4 cases, i.e. almost 7 percent) and also Cosmetics
and Perfumery (composed by 3 merchants, accounting for the 5 percent). In the
back end of the classification, we have just one player from Home and Furniture
and Publishing industries. From this database’s field we can infer that Clothing
and Informatics sectors are always the more developed ones in terms of online
initiatives by looking at their share in the market; but in addition to them, some
Desktop/mobile Total
Desktop 13
Mobile 41
Total 54
Table 108 - US merchants' web technology
Commodity sector Total
Others 18
Clothing 14
Informatics & general electronics 8
General 5
Grocery 4
Cosmetics & Perfumery 3
Home & Furniture 1
Publishing 1
Total 54
Table 109 - US merchants' sector
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
87
other industries are gaining an always more relevant position in the eCommerce
channel, especially General and Grocery and in the US also Cosmetics is
enlarging its footprint in the online environment.
4.1.2.2 Split by delivery speed
The next information collected deals
with the time needed to carry out the
delivery process. We can observe that
we have just two cases which can be
classified as fast, corresponding
together only to the 4 percent of the
overall censed initiatives. In particular,
the first example is the one of Amazon with
its Prime Now service and the pilot project Air; it is a Dot Com giant (in fact it
occupies the first position in the ranking in terms of sales’ volume) operating in
the General sector that with its own logistics is able to reach customers living in
28 US cities in between one and two hours and also a very shorter time (on
average 30 minutes) in the case of its Air project under test in which drones are
utilized to perform final delivery. The second case instead regards the informatics
traditional multichannel player Apple, staying at the highest steps of the podium
too (third place in the sales’ ranking); contrarily to Amazon case, Apple hasn’t
developed its own logistics service but has instead resorted to the crowd-sourcing
platform offered by Postmates, employing its independent drivers with their own
vehicles (bikes, motorbikes or cars) in order to serve its customers located in New
York and San Francisco in four hours or in alternative accepting a longer delivery
time window (in any case staying within the same day of order issuing), but with
the possibility of choosing the exact delivery moment and be sure of not missing
the delivery in this way. So we can observe that, for putting in place a fast option,
the Dot Com pure player has decided to invest for having its own logistics
infrastructure and this can be comprehensible since its only business is the online
one and a completely dedicated strategy implying also large investments can be
explained by the size of the web business for this kind of company; on the other
hand, the traditional retailer, even if with a solid economic structure, has decided
not to make such an investment for the improvement of its online channel (as it
is not the most flourishing channel of the company probably) and has resorted to
a much more flexible strategy, characterized by the variable costs of single
couriers’ service and little fixed investments.
Moving then to same day operators, they account for the 30 percent, which
constitutes a relevant portion of the total. Only three of them are Dot Com pure
players (Amazon again with its grocery business Amazon Fresh, Etsy and 1-800-
Delivery time Total
1-2h 1
< 6h 1
same day 16
next day 10
not fast 26
Total 54
Table 110 - US merchants' delivery time
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
88
Flowers.com), while all the others are traditional retailers having added the
online channel to their offer. In addition to the four cases belonging to Others
sector, Clothing industry plays a leading role also in this group with 6 merchants,
followed by Grocery sector with 3 merchants; Informatics instead looses presence
having only one case. All these cases have a maximum hour by which the order
has to be issued in order to have same day delivery performed with the certainty
of not being late and this hour usually ranges between 12:00 and 15:00, with just
the exception of Etsy, a website in which individuals can sign up and sell
handmade and/or vintage objects, that can accept orders to be received until
19:00. For what concerns the timings of delivery, some websites (not all) specify a
time window within which the delivery is performed; in few cases it doesn’t go
beyond 19:00, while in many cases it can be carried out also until 20:00 or 21:00 or
even until 22:00 at night by distinguishing different delivery windows within the
day (for example, between 9:00 and 13:00 or between 13:00 and 17:00 and then the
last option between 18:00 and 22:00).
We have then 10 cases, corresponding to 18 percent, of next day retailers. They
are all traditional multichannel operators and they belong to pretty much all the
different sectors (three of them belong to Clothing industry, three to Others, two
to Cosmetics sector and then just one to Informatics and Grocery). They almost
in every case have a hourly limit for order issuing too, which in most situations is
later than ones of same day merchants, ranging between 15:00 and 22:00, with the
exception of two players (cosmetics’ seller Avon and clothes’ retail J Crew) who
require to receive orders by 12:30 and 12:00 respectively for assuring next day
delivery. While for what concerns delivery time windows, almost no information
has been found.
Collecting so together fast, same day and next day initiatives, they are a total
of 28, representing a bit more than a half of cases taken from the ranking (exactly
the 52 percent). In addition to these cases of interest, we can find 26 players
(corresponding to a significant 48 percent of the total) offering delivery services
which can be all categorized as “not fast”. Eight of these actors are Dot Com pure
players while the remaining 17 are traditional retailers operating also in the
online channel; most of them belong to the Others sector, but we also have
relevant participation on merchants from Clothing sector (5), Informatics (5) and
General (4). In six of these cases the critical activity regards picking and packing
of orders in order to be ready for distribution: in fact in all these cases
(informatics merchant Systemax, clothing Fanatics, others’ retailers Lowe’s, The
Home Depot and GameStop and home & furniture merchant Wayfair) next day
delivery could be performed thanks to express services of outsourcing logistics
operators, but then times for order preparation have to added in order to obtain
the overall order fulfillment lead time and they are not specified or limited in any
way. For other 8 players instead the critical activity is final delivery, which cannot
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
89
be performed before two of three days after order issuing (even four days in some
cases). For the remaining 12 initiatives no additional information regarding the
long timings have been found; in any case we can observe that quite a balanced
situation comes out between criticalities in handling portion of the process and
criticalities in the delivery part.
4.1.2.3 In-depth analysis of logistics providers, related cost, coverage and type
Looking then at the
communication of a specific
service provider, we can see that
14 merchants state that they have
a trusted service provider whom
they resort to exclusively. Among
these known cases, the mostly
utilized service is the one of Deliv,
a same day delivery startup that
has implemented a crowd-sourcing model and controls a platform in which
retailers’ demand for logistics providers is matched with the offer of independent
single couriers who connect themselves to the platform when they are available
and carry out final home deliveries with their own transportation means (mostly
their car) in a lot of cities spread all over the national territory; in this way the
logistics structure is completely flexible and no actor has to make investments in
logistics infrastructures, vehicles’ fleets and so on. Another crowd-sourcing
service quite diffused is the of Postmates, which again covers many different US
cities, but differentiates itself from Deliv for what concerns transportation means
employed by couriers: in fact, cars are still utilized, but in many cases they leave
floor to the usage of motorbikes or even bicycles in order to gain some time by
nimbly crossing urban traffic. The third most employed service is UberRush,
again a crowd-sourcing platform more similar to Postmates in terms of means
utilized: in fact independent couriers can autonomously decide to use their
bicycle, motorcycle, car or van to perform delivery. Contrarily, two are the cases
of the logistics service directly developed and owned by Amazon for serving its
different businesses and which is characterized by different options (as we will
see later); then one case of merchant resorting to Google Express, a logistics
service developed by Google in order to act as provider for other retailers that
want to outsource their activities. Lastly, we can find the case of Dynamex, which
is a Texan logistics provider offering its services to Target grocer in Boston and
Minneapolis, involving the usage of refrigerated vehicles due to the nature of
retailer’s industry. We can so observe that when a unique trusted service provider
Service provider Total
Amazon 2
Deliv 5
Deliv/Postmates 1
Dynamex 1
Google 1
Postmates 2
UberRush 2
Total 14 Table 111 - US merchants' service providers
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
90
is chosen by an online merchant, in few cases it is a traditional logistics company;
most companies that decide to strongly link themselves to single providers, if
they are not able to develop their own logistics service (as the case of Amazon),
choose to resort to innovative crowd-sourcing platforms which allow agile and
flexible services at very low fixed costs.
For what concerns the next variables in the database, they analyze more in
depth the kind of service offered, so from now on the not fast initiatives will be
excluded from further investigation.
Focusing so on the 28
examples staying below 24 hours,
12 of them impose a fixed cost of
delivery regardless the expense for
bought products and the distance
to be travelled; most of these cases
are same day ones (8 out of 12)
and then we have three next day merchants
and the one staying below 6 hours. The interval of values in which this fixed
amount ranges is quite large, moving from a minimum of 5$ in the case of drugs’
retailer Walgreen and clothes’ seller Foot Locker (both resorting to Deliv for their
deliveries) to a maximum of more than 20$ for clothing merchants that sell items
of usually higher unitary cost with respect to others (22$ in the case of Gap, 25$
for J Crew and 26$ for Victoria’s Secret). We have also the case of Avon which
imposes a quite high fixed fee of 20,90$ but allows customers to have delivery for
free if their expense overcomes a threshold of 40$. On the contrary, 10 retailers
apply a variable fee for delivery which usually depends on the amount paid for
bought items or on the dimension and weight of the package to be delivered or
on the distance covered by couriers. Among these cases, no merchants belonging
to Clothing industry can be found, while many come from Others group and also
Grocery and Informatics; half of them performs next day deliveries, but there are
also four cases of same day merchants and Amazon case. The fee in most options
stays between 10$ and 20$ (with the exception of HP that applies higher fees
between 30$ and 80$ which are in line with the higher monetary value of
products delivered, since the total expense may reach even 4000$), while it is
lower for Amazon that applies a 7,99$ fee if customers want to receive their order
in one hour or give it for free if they accept to have the delivery window enlarged
to two hours. There are also the four cases of the grocer Amazon Fresh, the
publishing retailer Barnes&Nobles, the clothes’ seller Neiman Marcus and Office
Depot applying a variable fee that however disappears in case the expense
reaches a certain threshold (between 25$ and 50$). Finally, Gilt clothing merchant
offers a same day delivery with no fee applied. We can observe that for next day
Cost Total
fixed 12
variable 10
variable + free beyond threshold 4
fixed + free beyond threshold 1
free 1
Total 28 Table 112 - US merchants' delivery cost
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
91
deliveries a variable fee is applied that depends on different criteria related to the
particular features of the delivery journey, while for same day services the
application of a higher fixed fee is often needed in order to pay back costs of
service provision.
Analyzing then the geographical
coverage of the service, we can observe
that the majority of initiatives (18 out of
28) cannot reach the whole national
territory and are implemented only at
local level. These initiatives, as could be imagined, comprehend the two fast
cases, 15 out of the 16 same day options and just one next day delivery merchant.
In some cases the areas in which the service can be offered involve many US cities
or many US zip codes (e.g. 28 cities reached by fast Amazon Prime Now service;
many zip codes covered by Walmart grocer and Clothing merchants Macy’s and
Victoria’s Secret; more than five of the major American cities served by Amazon
Fresh, informatics Best Buy, Kohl’s Corporation and Foot Locker with their same
day options). However, seven are the cases in which the service is implemented
in one, two or maximum three centers (same day services by Staples, Target,
Barnes&Nobles, Nordstrom, Walgreen and Neiman Marcus and four hours
delivery performed by Apple) or even only some zip codes within the city of New
York (same day options by Saks, Etsy and Gilt). We can observe that merchants at
the highest places of the ranking (considering market share) are able to cover
wider territories with their fast services than retailers in the back. Regarding
instead the other 10 initiatives, they are performed in the whole country but of
course they mainly regard next day delivery options, with the exception of 1-800-
Flowers.com same day initiative that probably has to be performed within the
day due to the perishable nature of the products sold.
Going to the variable that identifies
the typology of logistics provider
performing necessary activities for
orders’ arrival at customers’ doorstep, 11
merchants (corresponding to 39
percent of the total) resort to outsourcing to
external providers specialized in logistics activities; most of these are next day
initiatives (8 out of 11), while just three are the cases of same day deliveries
outsourced. For what concerns next day cases, only three declare of relying on a
preferential traditional courier (FedEx for HP, USPS for Musician’s friend and
UPS for J Crew), while in all the other initiatives different couriers are chosen
indistinctively; instead same day merchants turn to more innovative providers of
National coverage Total
No 18
Yes 10
Total 28 Table 113 - US merchants' geographic coverage
Logistics type Total
outsourcing 11
crowd-sourcing 11
internal 6
Total 28
Table 114 - US merchants' logistics type
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
92
specifically developed express services (e.g. grocer Target resorts to Dynamex
Rush Delivery option, while Barnes&Nobles relies on Google Express). The exact
same percentage is made of merchants turning to crowd-sourcing platforms for
deliveries; almost all among these cases relate with same day deliveries (10 out of
11), with the addition of Apple’s fast option. The providers of crowd-sourcing
models, in decreasing order of presence in the ranking, are Deliv, Postmates and
UberRush; as previously introduced, they collect couriers that autonomously
decide to candidate themselves for a certain delivery and use their personal
means of transport; as these couriers are independent, they (and their means) do
not represent a fixed cost for anyone but are only paid a variable price for each
delivery they perform. In the end, six are the cases of merchants having built up
their own logistics infrastructure for performing always faster and more
personalized delivery services; half of these cases are the ones of grocers (Amazon
Fresh, Walmart and Peapod) that need a personalized fleet of refrigerated
vehicles due to the perishability of transported goods; in addition, there are cases
of big players in the market (Amazon Prime Now, Staples and Office Depot) that
have found economically viable and strategically convenient the choice of
investing in a personal infrastructure.
4.1.2.4 Logistics technologies and alternatives to last-mile delivery
Moving on, 17 merchants have
declared of preferably utilizing
one or more specific means of
transport. In 7 cases cars are used
and mostly own personal cars, as
almost all of these (6 out of 7) are
same day initiatives relying on
crowd-sourcing models; the
seventh is represented by an outsourced operator preferably using cars for same
day deliveries (Google Express). Then in other four same day crowd-sourcing
cases couriers are left free of choosing among their own bikes or motorbikes
preferably (even if the opportunity of using their own car is still available). Then
two are the cases of van only employment and other two of refrigerated vans (it is
the case of grocers) all for initiatives in which logistics activities are performed
internally by merchants. One is the crowd-sourcing case in which only bikes are
employed in a preferable way. Finally, we can find Amazon Air initiative in which
more innovative technologies as drones are employed for performing the fastest
service among the ones under examination. If internal logistics allows merchants
to have complete control on the whole process (including transportation means
used and conditions of items’ journey on them) and crowd-sourced logistics often
Transportation means Total
car 7
bicycle/motorbike 4
van 2
refrigerated van 2
bicycle 1
drones 1
Total 17 Table 115 - US merchants' transportation means
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
93
involves the utilization of faster means for navigating into traffic conditions
(especially bikes and motorbikes), outsourcing logistics in most of the cases does
not allow to have visibility on the transportation means.
By looking at the last-mile alternatives offered, we can observe that 11
merchants offer to their customers the option of issuing the order online and
collecting it in store in order to reduce together delivery costs for the merchant
and the probability of having unattended home deliveries. Most of the in-store
pickups can be performed the same day in which the order is made or at most the
next day (thing that represents a valid alternative to fast home deliveries), with
also some cases of even faster pickups (few hours after the order) but just for
items already available in store; just a couple of merchants make orders ready to
be picked up only after some days (usually between three and seven days). No
other alternatives can be found in the US, nor employment of parcel lockers’
systems, neither of other collection points.
4.1.2.5 Additional services: real-time tracking, date/time choice and pre-delivery contacts
More than a half of initiatives
(corresponding to 61 percent) provide
customers the chance of tracking in real-time
their order during its journey, in order to have more visibility on the exact
timings and reduce the probability of incurring in failed deliveries, more or less
knowing when the order is close to home.
Only five merchants give the opportunity
to final customers of choosing the exact time
window for order reception. This timeframe
can be of two, three or at most four hours and almost half of these initiatives are
related to grocery business, due to the higher inconvenience of incurring in
unattended home deliveries for the perishables transported.
Click&collect in store Parcel locker Other collection points Total
No No No 17
Yes No No 11
Total 28 Table 116 - US merchants' last-mile alternatives
Real-time tracking Total
No 11
Yes 17
Total 28 Table 117 - US merchants' tracking systems
Time window choice Total
No 23
Yes 5
Total 28
Table 118 - US merchants' time choice
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
94
In the end, 13 merchants (corresponding to 46 percent) declare of having some
kind of contact with final customers before the delivery takes place, always with
the aim of increasing visibility and reducing delivery failure. Six are the cases of
same day options offered by crowd-sourcing platform Deliv that, through an
email and the app, provide customers with name and picture of the courier to
whom their order has been assigned and all the relevant information about
delivery. In two cases details
are arranged before the
delivery is performed
through a phone call or a
text directly exchanged with
the courier. Then we have
some cases in which
notifications at different
stages of the delivery process are provided to customers through email: in one
case just the order confirmation is noted, while in two cases also delivery is
signaled and in other two cases a note for shipment of the package is sent too;
most of these cases relate to traditional logistics providers to whom retailers
resort in a outsourcing strategy.
4.1.3 United Kingdom
The second country addressed is the United Kingdom, for which the first 25
merchants of the national ranking have been submitted to census on most
traditional web browsers. It is analyzed separately from the rest of European
countries investigated because it accounts a much higher number of significant
initiatives with respect to them. Only one merchant belonging to the ranking
(the general retailer Rakuten) has been excluded from the database since he has
shut down its business in the UK; so the cases object of following analyses will be
24.
4.1.3.1 Breakdown by channel, web technology and commodity sector
Pre-delivery contacts Total
courier's name, picture and delivery info 6
details arranged before delivery 2
confirmation and delivery note 2
confirmation, shipment & delivery note 2
confirmation note 1
Total 13
Table 119 - US merchants' contacts
Dot Com/traditional pure player/multichannel Total
Dot Com pure player 6
traditional multichannel 18
Total 24 Table 120 - UK retailers' market channel
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
95
By looking at the market strategy, 6 out of the 24 retailers (corresponding to
25 percent) are Dot Com pure players and they all offer mobile access to
customers: three of them belong to Clothing industry, two come from
Informatics sector and then one case in Grocery and one other in General
industry. On the contrary, the remaining 72 percent is made of traditional
retailers which have added the online channel to their business; the share of
retailers belonging to Clothing industries is lower in this group (three cases),
equal to the one of grocers and merchants operating in the general sector, while
four are the merchants belonging to Informatics and general electronics and
Others sectors. Also in UK, more numerous are the cases of players not
exclusively born for the web channel but that have just enlarged their already
consolidated business (in fact, eight of the top ten players in terms of sales’
volumes belong to this multichannel category).
For what concerns technological
tools for connection with customers,
just 4 out of the 24 examined
merchants (representing the 17 percent)
have only a desktop access to their
website, while in the 83 percent of cases (20 examples) a mobile application has
been developed for improving and increasing the share of customers’ contact
with retailers’ offer. The percentage of mobile initiatives is higher in the UK than
in the US, implying a higher attention at keeping high frequency of contacts from
consumers side.
Analyzing the commodity
sector, we can find a quite
equilibrated presence of all
industries, from Clothing and
Informatics (6 cases for both,
corresponding to a 25 percent
each) to General, Grocery and
Other industries (counting for an almost 17
percent each). This means that all main sectors are quite well developed and
present in the list of most relevant cases in the online sector.
Desktop/mobile Total
Desktop 4
Mobile 20
Total 24
Table 121 - UK retailers' web technology
Commodity sector Total
Clothing 6
Informatics & general electronics 6
General 4
Grocery 4
Others 4
Total 24
Table 122 - UK retailers' sector
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
96
4.1.3.2 Split by delivery speed
Moving to the analysis of delivery
times, we can observe one case
belonging to the fast cluster: it is the
case of Sainsbury traditional grocer,
which have added the eCommerce
channel to its offer and thanks to its
internal logistics infrastructure and the
Chop Chop app is able to serve its customers
in a time included between one and two hours until 20:00 in the evening. Then 6
are the merchants offering same day deliveries: they are all traditional
multichannel retailers, two belonging to Informatics sector (Currys, owned by
Dixons company, and Farnell), two general merchants (Argos and Next), Tesco
grocer and the merchant Wickes belonging to Others cluster. They all have a
maximum hourly limit to respect in order to receive items the very same day and
this limit is much varied, moving from early in the morning (9:30 for Currys) to
late morning (12:00 and 13:00 for Next and Tesco respectively) until late afternoon
(17:00 for Wickes, 18:00 for Argos and even 20:00 in the case of Farnell). Time
windows available for delivery in most cases are quite late, reaching 22:00-23:00
at night and consider different time slots, the last one ranging between 16:00 and
23:00. However, the biggest portion of merchants offer next morning (3 cases) or
next day (11 initiatives) deliveries, accounting together for a 56 percent of the
total. Among these there is a strong prevalence of retailers belonging to Clothing
(the six cases of Shop Direct, Marks & Spencer, Asos, The Hut Group, Debenhams
and Arcadia) and to Informatics & general electronics sectors (the four players
Misco, Carphone Warehouse, eBuyer and Dabs); the remaining cases come from
General (John Lewis and JDWilliams) and Others clusters (B&Q and Boots). Also
these cases have a maximum hour for issuing the order which is later than same
day initiatives, staying in an interval between 17:30 and 24:00, while options for
delivery windows are many and much different one from the other. We can so
observe that Clothing retailers do not offer services faster than next day, while
the other industries are more developed towards fast and innovative services. The
remaining cases are three not fast services with delivery times not below two or
four days (the grocers Asda and Ocado and Findel that belongs to Others
category). Interesting to notice that little cases among the top 25 for sales’
volume do not represent an interesting object and 21 are subject to further
description as their services are all performed in less than 24 hours.
Delivery time Total
1-2h 1
same day 6
next morning 3
next day 11
not fast 3
Total 24
Table 123 - UK retailers' delivery time
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
97
4.1.3.3 In-depth analysis of logistics providers, related cost, coverage and type
Starting from the analysis of
service providers, we can observe
that only one merchant has one
specific service provider which resorts to,
differently from the higher amount of cases found in the US (14 merchants); this
is the case of grocer Sainsbury, that not only relies uniquely on its internal
logistics, but exploits the application realized by Chop Chop provider for
managing its deliveries. This implies that services of retailers operating in the fast
eCommerce environment in the UK are less personalized and differentiated with
respect to US situation.
In the large majority of cases
(72 percent) a fixed delivery fee is
applied, ranging between 3,95£
and 9,95£ in almost all the
options, with the exception of the
last player in the ranking
(informatics Dabs) applying a little higher fee
of 13,48£. In two cases (Asos and B&Q) the fee, which is around 5£, is deleted if a
certain threshold is reached for the expense 100£ and 50£ respectively). Just three
retailers instead offer delivery at a variable fee, depending on the amount of the
expense or on the weight of the order to be managed: they are the grocer Tesco
and the two informatics merchants Farnell and Misco, in which fees reach higher
values due to the unitary value of items sold. In the end, only Carphone
Warehouse informatics player offers delivery for free. With respect to US
situation, the share of retailers imposing a fixed fee is much higher, implying that
more merchants need to impose a fixed amount, although limited, in order to
experience economic viability.
Looking at the geographic coverage
of the services, we can see that,
conversely from what happened in the
US situation, the biggest part (17 out of
21 retailers, corresponding to 81 percent)
are able to cover all the national territory with their service; of course American
overall territory is not comparable at all with British one, but in any case a 81
Service provider Total
Chop Chop app 1
Total 1 Table 124 - UK retailers' service provider
Cost Total
fixed 15
variable 3
fixed + free beyond threshold 2
free 1
Total 21
Table 125 - UK retailers' delivery cost
National coverage Total
No 4
Yes 17
Total 21 Table 126 - UK retailers' geographic coverage
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
98
percent of national coverage is a big value. The remaining four cases can in any
case reach many selected postcodes for what concerns same day and next day
options, while the only case available only in London is the one performed in a
couple of hours by Sainsbury.
Moving then to the typology of
logistics provider, five merchants have
built up their own logistics
infrastructure and it is the case of
merchants in the first positions of the
ranking, the two grocers Tesco (ranked 2nd) and Sainsbury (4th), the general
merchant Argos (ranked 1st) and the two informatics merchants Farnell and
Misco (11th and 12th respectively); their strong market share and/or the type of
industries in which they operate (Grocery with the peculiarity of perishable items
to be managed and Informatics involving products of high monetary value and
often occupying much space) have driven these operators’ choice in facing
investments for the development of a personalized infrastructure. The other 16
retailers (corresponding to 76 percent) instead resort to outsourcing logistics
strategy and it regards mainly next morning or next day options (13 out of the 16);
in most cases they rely on different operators without a preferential partner,
while in few cases merchants declare of resorting preferentially to DPD logistics
provider. No cases of crowd-sourcing models can be found in this country,
meaning that innovative and differentiated services are not diffused in the UK.
4.1.3.4 Logistics technologies and alternatives to last-mile delivery
By looking at the peculiarity of
transportation means employed in
the service, more than a half of
the cases (corresponding to 57
percent) doesn’t specify anything
about it. On the contrary, nine
merchants provide specific information
on the technological tools utilized: in most of those cases (six out of nine, so the
67 percent) the preferentially employed mean is the van or at most a fleet of vans
at controlled temperature in the case of Tesco grocer; they mostly are cases in
which logistics providers in outsourcing are chosen for performing deliveries
(with the exception of the aforementioned dedicated refrigerated infrastructure
of Tesco and the internal logistics developed by top player in the ranking Argos),
implying that merchants have decided to resort to a generic service, not
personalized at all since vans are a traditional and not so fast way of transporting
Logistics type Total
outsourcing 16
internal 5
Total 21
Table 127 - UK retailers' logistics type
Transportation means Total
van 6
refrigerated van 1
bicycle 1
airplane 1
Total 9 Table 128 - UK retailers' transportation means
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
99
products. Moving then to faster services, we can find the case of informatics
company Farnell which has developed an internally owned logistics service made
by plane with the aim of assuring very fast deliveries (within the same day of
order issuing) in the whole national territory for such hardly manageable items
due to their size and weight. Lastly, the fastest service at all (the one offered by
grocer Sainsbury and carried out in between one and two hours within London
city) is made possible by providing internally employed couriers with bicycles for
navigating with agility within traffic congestion and handling little packages to
final customers, changing so the way they approach grocery shopping: instead of
doing big shopping once in a while, in this way they can make smaller shopping
of fresh products more frequently and have it delivered in two hours at their
home. So, excepted for this last very innovative case, most UK merchants do not
rely on particular technologies for improving their service.
Click&collect in store Parcel locker Other collection points Total
No No No 4
No No Yes 3
Yes No No 9
Yes No Yes 4
Yes Yes No 1
Total 21 Table 129 - UK retailers' last-mile alternatives
By analyzing the presence of last-mile alternatives in the offer, 14 out of the total
21 cases (corresponding to 67 percent) offer click & collect in store. Just few cases
allow customers to go and pickup their orders by the same day in which they
have made the online expense (or even in few hours) and it occurs usually only in
case the ordered items were already available in store; most merchants don’t
make the order available for being picked up before the next day if it has to be
fulfilled from a different location (usually the central warehouse), or even it may
take two or three days. Among these 14 retailers, four offer also the opportunity
of finding the order ready in another point of collection, different from the
traditional store owned by the merchant; this collection point in most cases is a
convenience store partnered by the retailer, such as gas stations and little local
shops, while in one case it is the collection point of property of the partnered
logistics provider (Collect+ that is partner of John Lewis merchant); also these
collections cannot be performed before the next day of order issuing or even
later. Also among merchants not offering pickup in store there are three cases in
which a different collection point is offered: they are all cases of outsourced
logistics providers that make their own pickup points available (Collect+ and
Doddle) all the next day of the order. Lastly, one merchant (Tesco grocer), in
addition to in store pickup the same day after 16:00 (if orders are issued by 13:00),
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
100
offers the chance to customers of finding their packages inside parcel lockers by
InPost provider located at the Tube stops, making impossible to fail deliveries
from logistics providers’ side. In this sense, UK situation about last-mile
alternatives for improving delivery efficiency is much more developed with
respect to US one.
4.1.3.5 Additional services: real-time tracking, date/time choice and pre-delivery contacts
14 out of the 21 analyzed merchants
(corresponding to 67 percent) offer the
chance of having real-time information about
tracking of the order, which is a useful information for increasing deliveries’
success and it is close to the percentage of the same merchants in the United
States.
Moving on, we can find that almost
a half of the interesting merchants offer
the chance of choosing the exact
delivery date and/or time. Five are the
cases of retailers normally performing
deliveries the next day or allowing customers to select another precise day of
their choice (Marks & Spencer, Carphone Warehouse, B&Q, Boots and Dabs); this
of sure means that the service goes out from the field of interest, lengthening the
delivery timings even up to two or three days. Conversely, retailers at the highest
positions of the ranking offer the choice of a specific delivery time slot within a
day or even the choice of both day and time. Next day clothes’ seller Shop Direct
allows to choose a different day (increasing so the lead time) but also of a precise
time during the day; in the other five examples instead (Argos, Tesco, Currys,
Farnell and Wickes) customers are left free to select a delivery time slot within
the same day of order issuing which can last one/two hours with an additional
cost for this service or it can be a larger slot of about three/four hours for a
cheaper and more flexible service. Compared to US, the service of time slots’
choice is much more spread in UK.
Pre-delivery contacts Total
delivery note 9
Total 9 Table 132 - UK retailers' contacts
Real-time tracking Total
No 7
Yes 14
Total 21
Table 130 - UK retailers' tracking systems
Day/time window choice Total
No 10
Yes 11
Total 21
Table 131 - UK retailers' day/time choice
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
101
Lastly, about the possibility of having contact with the courier before final
delivery, nine merchants are somehow developed in this direction, but they only
provide customers with a notification of delivery when it is almost going to occur,
which can be sent in different ways: by email, text, call to communicate the exact
time slot or 30 minutes before the delivery takes place. The analysis highlights a
presence of more developed and efficient ways to keep contacts with customers
and reduce occurrence of failed deliveries in US compared to United Kingdom.
In conclusion, innovation in delivery services is quite less widespread in UK
with respect to United States, regarding at the same time speed of the delivery
process offered by merchants, choice of a logistics provider with which
partnering for personalization of services and logistics infrastructure put in place
(i.e. means employed and last mile alternatives). However, even if not notably
fast and innovative, almost every retailer with a relevant market share offers a
kind of express delivery (at least next day) with a large geographic coverage in the
whole country.
4.1.4 Other European countries (France, Germany, Italy and Spain)
The third geographic area of interest is represented by the other censed
European countries; they are France, Germany, Italy and Spain and they are
grouped for the analysis because together they account for a number of
interesting cases which is comparable to the one of United States or UK alone.
First, the total number of websites submitted to research for these territories is
89: in fact, top 25 merchants of the national ranking have been investigated for
what concerns French, German and Italian situation, while for Spain only 14
retailers have been taken into consideration as this was the total quantity of
players involved in its related Top 500 Guide’s ranking.
Numerous are however the merchants that has to be excluded from the
database. Indeed, in France the general merchant Group 3si, after having
enlarged its diffusion by adding the online channel to the traditional one, has
decided to stop its eCommerce business, probably for an economic strategy of
specialization on the best selling channel; differently, Bijoudumois has
completely disappeared from every type of market. For what regards the German
situation, one retailer is not selling physical objects and so is not arranging any
activity for distribution (it is the Dot Com actor Arcandor which sells
obligations); another is the grocer Metro which works according to a business-to-
business logic and so goes out from our focus on final deliveries to single
individuals. One is the Spanish case which has shut down its whole business (the
last player in the ranking Bonacuista), while three are the merchants belonging to
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
102
the Italian ranking that up to now have shut down their operations and they all
worked in the Informatics industry (Dot Com player YouBuy.it, the other Dot
Com Bow that has been absorbed by Gruppo Banzai’s ePrice business and the
traditional Eldo Megastore which experienced bankruptcy in 2014). So eight are
the overall European players out of interest, reducing the total merchants’ sample
in the database to 81 cases.
4.1.4.1 Breakdown by channel, web technology and commodity sector
Table 133 - European merchants' market channel
Country Dot Com/traditional pure player/multichannel Total
France Dot Com pure player 7
traditional multichannel 16
France Total 23
Germany Dot Com pure player 9
traditional multichannel 14
Germany Total 23
Italy Dot Com pure player 9
traditional multichannel 13
Italy Total 22
Spain Dot Com pure player 6
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
103
Moving then to the technological degree of diffusion channels, we can see
that France is the country with the lowest presence of pure players Dot Com (7,
corresponding to 30 percent, against the 70 percent of traditional retailers). The
percentage increases in Germany (39 percent), Italy (41 percent) and Spain (46
percent), going always closer to the half. As we can observe, French overview
outlines a situation same as United Kingdom and comparable also to US, in
which online business is dominated by retailers that only once having established
themselves in more traditional channels and having gained a strong market
position, have decided to add up a web channel for a wider diffusion; the only
difference noted in France regards the commodity sector: indeed, while Dot
Come players see a higher presence in sectors such as Informatics and General in
English-speaking countries, here Clothing sector is much less linked to
traditional shops and more projected towards a new path of online sales’ only,
marking an innovative intent. The other three European countries instead, which
are the ones experimenting a later and lower development of web sales, show a
retail market in which online only actors have significantly left their footprint,
meaning that the more actual trend for companies showing up lately is the one of
channel differentiation and focus on the web exclusively, which allows to enter
the market rapidly (without having to invest too much time and effort in physical
infrastructure realization) and even more rapidly reaching a high and widespread
diffusion.
However, the limitation is that being more recent and less economically strong,
online pure players in these countries are also the ones offering the slowest
delivery services up to now, so less interesting cases for the research’s objective.
traditional multichannel 7
Spain Total 13
Total 81
Country desktop/mobile Total
France desktop 6
mobile 17
France Total 23
Germany desktop 8
mobile 15
Germany Total 23
Italy desktop 16
mobile 6
Italy Total 22
Spain desktop 0
mobile 13
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
104
Addressing then the
commodity sector, we
can find differences among these
four European countries. France experiments a majority of retailers working in
the Clothing industry (8 out of 23, corresponding to 35 percent), followed by
Informatics and general electronics sector (22 percent), Grocery and the group of
Other minor sectors (accounting both for a 13 percent); smaller is the presence of
cases belonging to General industry (9 percent) and there is just one initiative for
both Home and Furniture and Publishing industries. From this sectors’
distribution we can see that France is the expression of a quite traditional
situation in which the most developed industries in the web market are still
Clothing and Informatics. Clothing has the stongest presence also in Spanish
environment, accounting alone for almost one half of the initiatives in the
ranking (46 percent exactly) and leaving small portions to all the remaining
sectors (2 the cases in General, Grocery and Publishing industries; only one for
Informatics cluster). Germany instead sees the predominance of two sectors
together: Informatics and General, accounting each one for the 26 percent of
cases, followed by Clothing and Others classes (13 percent each); smaller space is
left to Grocery and Cosmetics industries (9 percent each) and lastly Publishing
sector (1 merchant).
Interesting to note the peculiarity of Italian situation: the majority of online
merchants operate in the Publishing sector with its 7 initiatives (i.e. 28 percent),
followed by a relevant presence of the Informatics sector (23 percent) and then
General (18 percent). Then less space is left to Clothing (13 percent) and just few
sporadic cases can be found for what concerns Cosmetics and Perfumery, Grocery
and Other sectors (one merchant each). Globally, we can surely affirm that the
most developed industries in the online channel remain Clothing and
Informatics, with different single weights in the diverse countries; the other
sectors kind of lag behind, even if General and Grocery ones are experiencing a
growth in the market presence, especially in France and Germany, according to
what is happening also in UK and US realities. Less developed remains the
situation in Spain and Italy, in which there is one commodity sector weighing
Spain Total 13
Total 81 Table 134 - European merchants' web technology
Country Commodity sector Total
France Clothing 8
General 2
Grocery 3
Home & Furniture 1
Informatics & general electronics 5
Others 3
Publishing 1
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
105
much (Clothing for Spanish case,
Publishing in Italy) and then only residual attention left to the others (original
the case of Italian Publishing industry, which accounts for a big portion but it is
also the one including the least innovative and interesting initiatives, mostly
involving delivery timings that go far beyond even the next day).
4.1.4.2 Split by delivery speed
Country Delivery time Total
France 1-2h 2
same day 3
next morning 2
next day 6
not fast 10
France Total 23
Germany 1-2h 1
same day 2
next day 6
not fast 14
France Totale 23
Germany Clothing 3
Cosmetics & Perfumery 2
General 6
Grocery 2
Informatics & general electronics 6
Others 3
Publishing 1
Germany Totale 23
Italy Clothing 3
Cosmetics & Perfumery 1
General 4
Grocery 1
Informatics & general electronics 5
Others 1
Publishing 7
Italy Totale 22
Spain Clothing 6
General 2
Grocery 2
Informatics & general electronics 1
Publishing 2
Spain Totale 13
Total 81 Table 135 - European merchants' sector
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
106
Germany Total 23
Italy same day 2
next day 1
not fast 19
Italy Total 22
Spain 1-2h 1
same day 2
next day 2
not fast 8
Spain Total 13
Total 81 Table 136 - European merchants' delivery time
Coming to the focus of the research, the delivery timing, we can see a
situation that distinguishes itself from UK case pretty much: not more than
almost a half of the initiatives in the ranking can be considered of interest in each
of the four examined countries (or also much less in some particular cases), even
if there are some differences between one and the other. France is the one
including the highest number of services staying below the next day time
constraint; in total they are indeed 13, corresponding to 57 percent of the total.
Two are the really fast services, not taking more than two hours at most to be
performed: one is the one hour service offered by Carrefour grocer through the
recourse to LaPoste logistics infrastructure of vans that deliver in the Parisian
territory up to 22:00 at night; the other takes between one and two hours (with
an average counted time of 78 minutes) and it is performed by Darty informatics
retailer together with the crowd-sourcing logistics service of Colisweb working
from 9:30 to 20:00 and guaranteed only if orders are received before 16:30. Three
then are the merchants offering same day service: the informatics C-Discount
(owned by the top player in the ranking Casinò) and the two clothes’ sellers Le
Bon Marchè (property of the LVMH group) and Brand Alley; they all rely on
diverse outsourced couriers to deliver items within the same day of order issuing
(starting from 16:00, but only if the order is received by a hourly limit ranging
between 10:00 and 14:00) pretty much in the Parisian region alone. After, putting
together next morning and next day retailers, we have another 35 percent of
initiatives; among these, we can find retailers belonging to many different
commodity sectors, from General (Rue du Commerce and Oxybull) to Clothing
(Yoox, Showroomprivè and Sarenza) with some cases also in Grocery (Auchan),
Informatics (LDLC) and Publishing sectors (France Loisirs). In order to not
overcome the following day for delivery, most of these retailers impose a time
constraint for order issuing which goes from 11:00 in the case of Showroomprivè
to mainly first hours of the afternoon (14:00 or 16:30). For next morning services
deliveries are carried out between 10:00 and 13:00, while for the others couriers
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
107
operate along the whole day and usually not before the afternoon; in any case, all
these services are performed by outsourced logistics providers. A big role
however is played by those merchants that with their delivery services can be
categorized as “not fast”: they are 10, corresponding to a 43 percent of the overall
ranking. They belong to almost all the commodity sectors and for them both
activities of order preparation and distribution are critical: indeed, order
preparation takes between one and three days (when specified, because in many
cases the retailer is not even able to provide a forecast on this time), but also
delivery lead time is usually reaches the 48 hours, or even one week. French case
can so be considered the most developed, with a significant amount of initiatives
carried out in less than 24 hours, but it lags behind UK and US in any case,
mainly due to the fact that the majority of cases is not faster than next day or at
most next morning.
The secondly addressed country is Germany and here we can find a lower
number of interesting cases: only one is the merchant offering a fast delivery
initiative and it is the informatics Conrad that is able to serve its customers in
two hours (it identifies three two-hours time window within which deliveries are
performed: 10:00-12:00, 14:00-16:00 and 18:00-20:00) in many cities thanks to its
internally developed logistics branch Tiramizoo; then there is a couple of same
day cases, one of the informatics player Notebooksbilliger and the other of
Cosmetics & Perfumery company Douglas, both relying on outsourced providers
(NBB courier and DHL respectively) for reaching customers’ homes in an evening
timeslot comprised between 18:00 and 22:00 if the order is received by the hourly
limit imposed by the retailer for guaranteeing the same day service (ranging
between 11:00 and 15:00 according to the different city). Lastly, six are the
initiatives occurring in less than 24 hours, with a prevalence of General
merchants (Otto Group, Baur Versand, Printus and Schneider), one clothing
(Klingel) and one informatics company (Cyberport); also here, excepted for the
number one player in the ranking that has developed its own logistics service, we
can find mostly outsourced providers for the orders’ handling and delivery
activities, offering a quite homogeneous service of next day delivery if the order is
received by a certain time boundary going from 11:00 to 18:30. We can so notice
that only 9 out of the 23 merchants (corresponding to 39 percent) belong to the
group of services under focus of this research. The biggest portion of cases is
indeed represented by non-fast merchants: they are 14 (i.e. the 61 percent of the
total) and they belong to all the different commodity sectors, from most
developed Clothing (Esprit and Adidas) and Informatics (Medion, GetGoods and
Pearl) to Grocery (Tengelmann and Lidl), General (Brands4friends, Tchibo)
passing by Other minor industries (Delticom, Musikhaus, Zooplu) as also
Publishing (Weltbild) and Cosmetics (Sanicare); they include also many players
occupying high positions in the ranking in terms of market share and their
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
108
criticality is mainly linked with the delivery activity (in fact, even if order
preparation timing is not specifically identified in some cases, delivery is most of
the time performed in an interval of one/three or two/four days with no more
specific clues and sometimes it may take also weeks). So surely Germany has
much to learn from the previously described countries for what concerns delivery
timings reduction.
The third place in terms of amount of cases of interest is occupied by Spain,
even if they are only five overall (accounting for the 38 percent): general
multichannel retailer El Corte Inglès is the only one offering a fast service,
reaching customers in one/two hours through its internal logistics infrastructure
or same day by choosing the exact time in which they want to receive their
products and delivering from 12:00 to 22:00; the following interesting initiatives
instead are all given to custody of outsourced providers: two are the same day
merchants (clothing actor Massimo Dutti and publishing retailer Casadellibro)
operating until 22:00 for delivering orders the very same day they are issued if
this has happened by 12:00; again two are the next day initiatives, all belonging to
clothing industry (Esdemarca and Adolfo Dominguez) both imposing a hourly
limitation for order submission in order to be sure of receiving items the
following day (15:00 and 13:00 respectively). For what concerns the other
merchants, eight offer non-fast services: they belong to almost all the different
commodity sectors (clothing with Privalia, BuyVip and Ofertix; informatics with
TPO Informatica; grocery with Grupo Eroski and Mercadona; general with
Dreivip; publishing with Agapea), many of them have even high sales’ volumes
and again, similarly to what has been found in the German situation, the issue for
them is related to distributive process, as most merchants need at least 48 hours
and up to few weeks to finalize delivery. Therefore also Spanish situation is
lagging behind, with most big players in the online business not able to or not
interested in setting up fast delivery services.
Lastly, the least interesting country in this light is Italy with its three out of 22
merchants (corresponding only to 14 percent): two are the same day services,
provided by informatics Gruppo Banzai and general D-Mail which, by ordering
within 13:00 and 12:00 respectively, allow customers to receive their items by the
end of the day (before 22:00) by exploiting outsourced logistics operators; then
one is the case in which, by ordering within 16:30, clothes’ seller Yoox Group
guarantees next day delivery always through the activity of an outsourced
provider. However, the large majority of merchants (19 out of 22, i.e. the 86
percent) belong to the not fast category: most of them belong to publishing
(Mondadori, Libreria Universitaria, Feltrinelli, Webster, Hoepli, IBS Network and
Unilibro) and informatics sectors (MediaWorld, Euronics, Marco Polo which is
now called Expert and Monclick) but few cases of all the other sectors can also be
found. In all these cases both order preparation and distribution activities are
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
109
performed in a slow manner: the time required to prepare the order before it
leaves the retailers’ warehouse is mainly not measured and not specified, while in
few cases it is expressly stated that it may take up to two days to be ready for
starting its distributive journey; in addition, delivery timing is blurred, included
in a range of 24/72 hours that depend on the logistics provider chosen (but
customers often have no clue on which is until they receive the items). The fact
that also the first online player in the ranking belongs to this cluster says much
about the Italian backwardness in the fast eCommerce context and highlights a
gap from the rest of mostly developed European countries.
The study of delivery timings have brought to the selection of 30 merchants
for the overall European context (13 French, 9 German, 5 Spanish and 3 Italian)
for which delivery services stay within the 24 hours threshold and that will
represent the focus of the following analyses.
4.1.4.3 In-depth analysis of logistics providers, related cost, coverage and type
Starting from the analysis of the presence of service providers uniquely affiliated to a certain retailer, we can see that the situation is different inside Europe. No cases at all can be found regarding Italy and Spain; very few cases also in France: LaPoste is the official outsourced distributor for grocer Carrefour and offers a delivery service which takes only one hour to reach Paris’ customers; differently, Colisweb logistics operator provides a crowd-sourcing model always utilized by Darty informatics retailer for performing final deliveries in about one/two hours in different French cities. We can so observe that in these three aforementioned countries the recourse to partnership with service providers is a non-diffused practice, resembling the situation found in the United Kingdom, even if when implemented takes to the best results in terms of delivery timings’ reduction (as
we can see from the two French cases, which are the fastest initiatives in the country), meaning that much can be done in the future for service improvement.
Country Service provider Total
France Colisweb 1
LaPoste 1
France Total 2
Germany DHL 1
DPD 1
Hermes 2
NBB courier 1
Tiramizoo 1
Germany Total 6
Total 8
Table 137 - European merchants' service providers
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
110
A little different is instead German situation, in which we can find a greater
diffusion of the practice: in fact, 6 out of the overall studied web merchants have
a single trusted logistics provider which they resort to. Also here, the fastest
national initiative at all belongs to this cluster and it is represented by Tiramizoo,
an internal branch of Conrad informatics company specifically developed by the
retailer itself for responding to its logistics needs; by having built up such a
specific and personalized service, Conrad is able to serve citizens of many cities
across the German territory within two hours. The same strategy has been
applied by top player in the ranking, Otto Group merchant that belongs to the
General commodity sector: it has built up its own logistics service under the
name of Hermes company and it offers the service also in outsourcing to other
competitor retailers (e.g. Baur Versand) in order to have a sort of control on the
service level offered by actors in the market (which up to now is next day, but the
company has acquired some stakes also of Liefery distributive operator and has
manifested the intention of moving to a faster same day service, always through
internal ownership and control). The other three cases are represented by players
occupying lower positions in the ranking, which resort to a specific outsourced
logistics operator (which can be NBB courier for Notebookbilliger informatics
merchant, DHL for cosmetics retailer Douglas and DPD for general retailer
Printus) for putting in place same or next day delivery services. So Germany
results more developed in this direction with respect to its European neighbors,
moving close to US in terms of number of initiatives but not in terms of their
type: indeed while United States see an almost exclusive presence of crowd-
sourcing models, Germany is still much dependent on outsourcing or at most to a
few cases of internal development but stays far from the innovation and the
speed of services built up in partnership in the American continent.
Country Cost Total
France free 2
fixed 7
variable 2
variable + free beyond threshold 2
France Total 13
Germany fixed 6
variable 3
Germany Total 9
Italy fixed 1
fixed + free beyond threshold 1
variable 1
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
111
Table 138 - European merchants' delivery cost
By looking at costs imposed to customers for this kind of delivery services, we can see that the majority of merchants in all European countries imposes a fixed fee in order to pay back the efforts for such types of services’ arrangement (excepted for Italy, that can be however considered as partially relevant as the reduced number of cases it presents makes difficult to identify a particularly diffused trend). For what concerns French situation, 7 out of 13 merchants (corresponding to 54 percent) apply a fixed delivery fee and it is the case of also most of the fastest services (two hours service by Darty and same day by C-Discount and Le Bon Marchè), independently from the commodity sector; this cost varies a lot from one retailer to the other, with a minimum value of 5€ for C-Discount, passing by between 10 and 15€ for Oxybull, France Loisirs and Darty, until a higher fee that goes beyond 30€ for more fashion and luxury retailers such as Yoox, Rue du Commerce and Le Bon Marchè. Four then are the merchants applying a variable fee and they consist of mostly next day or at least next morning initiatives; the fee depends on the amount of the expense in bought items and on the city to serve and in two cases delivery is given for free if the expense reaches a certain threshold which has however to be quite high (150€ for grocer Auchan and 300€ for informatics company LDLC). One next day merchant, the clothes’ seller Sarenza, is always giving delivery for free and the same is valid also for the most interesting case in terms of delivery time (the one of Carrefour), as it is a newly developed service built up as a pilot project in only 9 arrondissements of French capital. Moving to German analysis, 6 out of 9 merchants (i.e. 67 percent) apply a fixed fee ranging from a minimum of 7,95€ for clothing company Klingel to a maximum of 39,95€ for voluminous items by general retailer Baur Versand; they mainly include next day services, but also the fastest one performed by Conrad. The other 3 merchants offer delivery at a variable fee which only depends on the expense (in ant case it never overcomes the 11,90€ applied by Douglas), including all the two same day merchants and one
Italy Total 3
Spain fixed 5
Spain Total 5
Total 30
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
112
next day. In Spain we can only find retailers applying a fixed fee, no matter the service’s speed, always staying below 9,95€ applied by same day operators Massimo Dutti and Casadellibro (also the faster service by El Corte Inglès is cheaper). Lastly, the small population of Italian cases reports a variety in which two merchants choose to apply a fixed fee (12€ for Yoox Group, 6.50€ for D-Mail but becoming free once reached the 60€ of expense) and only one resorts to a variable fee (Gruppo Banzai). Globally, we can state that the application of fixed fees is often needed in order to set up faster services in the European context independently from the peculiarity of the speed, mainly because of the prevalent recourse to logistics services in outsourcing which cannot be amortized and do not allow to reach scale or scope economies to merchants.
Moving to the geographic coverage, we can see that in almost all countries the
majority of merchants is able to offer its express service in the whole national
territory. This is due to the fact that most cases are not faster than next morning
or next day, so they have a sufficient time available to cover longer distances. If
we look instead at the fast and same day services they usually are performed only
in a smaller local territory: in France the one/two hours service by Darty is the
only one being able to reach 8 cities thanks to the flexibility of Colisweb’s crowd-
sourcing model exploited, while the other fast and same day merchants resorting
to outsourcing providers can mostly reach the Parisian region only (or even a part
of it); this happens also in Germany, where fast and same day retailers can offer
their services only in some selected cities or postcodes; the same situation can be
found in Spain, where same day players can cover just one city (Barcelona for
Massimo Dutti and Madrid for Casadellibro), while El Corte Inglès thanks to its
internal logistics infrastructure can perform its fast services in more cities but
always staying far from an homogeneous national coverage. The only exception
can be found in Italy, in which although ePrice same day delivery can be found
Country National coverage Total
France no 5
yes 8
France Total 13
Germany no 3
yes 6
Germany Total 9
Italy no 1
yes 2
Italy Total 3
Spain no 3
yes 2
Spain Total 5
Total 30 Table 139 - European merchants' geographic coverage
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
113
just in the Milan area, D-mail retailer is able to cover with its same day service
the national territory resorting to preferential outsourced courier BRT. In any
case, the reason why national coverage is so much present among these countries
can be found in the predominant slowness of express options (mostly next day).
Addressing then the type of logistics providers employed, easy to notice is the
strong prevalence of outsourced actors. Crowd-sourcing models are almost
unknown in the European context, with the only exception of Colisweb French
case offered to Darty informatics retailer in which single citizens or small courier
companies can autonomously make themselves available for delivery through the
platform. Three are the overall cases in which the retailer has invested in an
internal logistics infrastructure to personalize and internally support its online
business (the two German Otto Group and Conrad and the Spanish El Corte
Inglès); they are all cases of market giants that in some cases (the German ones)
can also start to outsource the logistics service born only for internal reasons and
enlarge in this way their business. The rest of merchants (26 out of 30, so
definitely the biggest portion) rely on external logistics providers for their mainly
same day and next day services, in most of the cases not even one preferential
operator that they pickup preferentially. Mostly cited couriers however are
Colissimo and Chronopost in France, DHL and DPD in Germany and BRT in
Italy. This situation can be identified as the main source of poor innovation in
fast web services, since the recourse to a generic and often changing external
operator provides a strong limitation to the improvement of the service to
customers.
Country Logistics type Total
France crowd sourcing 1
outsourcing 12
France Total 13
Germany internal 2
outsourcing 7
Germany Total 9
Italy outsourcing 3
Italy Total 3
Spain internal 1
outsourcing 4
Spain Total 5
Total 30 Table 140 - European merchants' logistics type
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
114
4.1.4.4 Logistics technologies and alternatives to last-mile delivery
Country Transportation means Total
France bicycle 1
bicycle/motorbike 1
refrigerated van 1
France Total 3
Germany van 2
Germany Total 2
Total 5 Table 141 - European merchants' transportation means
As we could expect from the low degree of logistics services’ personalization
and specialization and also from the generally limited speed of delivery services,
the utilization of some specific transportation means is a not diffused practice.
We can find just three merchants in France declaring of resorting to some
vehicles: the two fastest services explicit the preferential use of bicycles for their
deliveries across the city of Paris, that in one case it’s an exclusive use (LaPoste
handles for Carrefour grocer orders which are small enough to allow the use of
bicycle as the unique mean for the service), while in the second case it is
accompanied by the recourse to other means (mostly motorbikes) due to the size
and weight of most items sold (indeed it is Darty informatics merchant); we have
also the other grocer, Auchan, which needs to exploit a fleet of temperature-
controlled vans due to the perishable nature of its products (since the service is
not so fast as Carrefour and products remain in the distributive process for even
24 hours). Two instead are the German retailers providing a specific description
of the vehicles they employ, but in both cases it regards only traditional vans
(even for the fast two-hours service offered by Conrad through its internal
logistics Tiramizoo, probably because again it deals with informatics business and
therefore big size products mostly). Excepted for these few initiatives, no other
retailers declares or is even aware of the means utilized for the distribution of its
products.
Moving to the research of last-mile alternatives to traditional home delivery
implemented by European web merchants, we can observe that very few are the
cases of retailers offering no alternative ways of receiving ordered items. Click
and collect in store practices find a sufficient diffusion in almost all countries
excepted for Italy: indeed, 5 out of 13 (corresponding to 38 percent) actors
provide this solution in France, a similar percentage (33 percent) can be found in
Germany, while it regards almost the totality of Spanish retailers (4 out of 5).
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
115
Country Click&collect in
store Parcel locker Other collection
point Total
France no no no 2
yes 6
yes no no 1
yes 4
France Total 13
Germany no no no 4
yes 2
yes no no 2
yes 1
Germany Total 9
Italy no no no 1
yes 2
Italy Total 3
Spain no no yes 1
yes no no 3
yes 1
Spain Total 5
Total 30 Table 142 - European merchants' last-mile alternatives
Just a couple of merchants let customers know that the pickup in store is
available in few hours after the moment of order insertion (both French cases,
products can be collected after one hour at Auchan stores and after three hours
in Oxybull shops) and not much more are the ones offering click & collect same
day or at most next day (same day for German informatics retailer Conrad and
Spanish El Corte Inglès, while next day for French clothes’ seller Le Bon Marchè
and German Cyberport) and these faster pickups are often available only if
ordered items are already physically present in store; all the other half cases take
at least a couple of days in order to fulfill the stores with ordered products, so
cannot be considered, to all intents and purposes, as real express alternatives. If
we look instead at other collection points offered, more than a half of overall
European studied retailers (17 out of 30) makes available at least one kind of point
in which customers can go and personally collect their orders. 10 of these cases
come from France and they mainly involve pickup points of logistics service
providers chosen by retailers (mostly Chronopost in 24 hours or at most next day
and Colis/Colissimo points needing however at least 48 hours for finding orders
ready to be collected); interesting to notice the case of Auchan which, in addition
to pick-up inside the store and collection in Chronopost points, have added an
original service called Auchandrive that allows customers to find bought items
inside their car’s trunk, without the need of leaving the parking area and entering
the store. For what concerns Germany, all the three merchants (Otto Group, Baur
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
116
Versand and Douglas) exploit mainly the presence of Hermes Paketshops in
which ordered pachages can be collected starting from 24 hours after the order
issuing; Italy and Spain instead presents cases in which products are collected at
the logistics courier’s collection point, that can be UPS or TNT or BRT or
whatever is chosen by the retailer, but usually not before three/five days from
order reception. Lastly, no cases at all can be found of parcel lockers’ initiatives.
We can so further confirm the level of logistics backwardness of these countries
in terms of last-mile.
4.1.4.5 Additional services: real-time tracking, date/time choice and pre-delivery contacts
Dealing with the availability of a real-time tracking system, we can see that
also most of European merchant provide this type of visibility on orders’ journey
to their customers, in line with a more global trend; the only exception is
represented by Spain, in which 3 out of 5 retailers do not allow to track moves of
the orders, increasing so the probability of occurrence of failed deliveries.
Country Real-time tracking Total
France no 4
yes 9
France Total 13
Germany no 1
yes 8
Germany Total 9
Italy no 1
yes 2
Italy Total 3
Spain no 3
yes 2
Spain Total 5
Total 30 Table 143 - European merchants' tracking system
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
117
Addressing
the topic of time
choice, only one
third of the
merchants offers
this option. Five
retailers are
French and
represent the 38
percent of the
national
initiatives; a
couple of them allows to arrange an appointment by selecting a specific date and
hour, but in advance of some days, while the other merchants offer the
opportunity of selecting, within the same day of order insertion, a delivery time
slot which can be of 2 hours (in the case of Brand Alley clothing company) but
also of only 30 minutes (in the fastest option offered by Carrefour). The other five
initiatives are from Germany and there they represent more than a half of the
total national cases; in addition, they all allow customers to select a time window,
which can be only a distinction between morning and afternoon
(Notebooksbilliger) or the identification of a specific 4 hours slot among 7:00-
11:00, 10:00-14:00 and 13:00-18:00 (the merchants served by Hermes logistics) or
even a shorter 2 hours slot distributed along the whole day until later hours such
as 18:00-20:00 or 20:00-22:00 (Douglas). Considering so France and Germany, we
can observe that some actions have been taken in order to increase efficiency of
delivery services and customers’ satisfaction at the moment of orders reception.
No cases at all can be noticed instead for what concerns Italian and Spanish
situations.
Country Day/time window choice Total
France no 8
yes 5
France Total 13
Germany no 4
yes 5
Germany Total 9
Italy no 3
Italy Total 3
Spain no 5
Spain Total 5
Total 30 Table 144 - European merchants' day/time choice
Country Pre-delivery contacts Total
France confirmation and delivery note 4
confirmation note 1
delivery note 3
France Total 8
Germany delivery note 3
Germany Total 3
Italy confirmation and delivery note 1
Italy Total 1
Spain confirmation and delivery note 1
delivery note 2
Spain Total 3
Total 15 Table 145 - European merchants' contacts
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
118
The last variable tackled regards the nature of contacts with people in charge
of the delivery process before it is performed. France reports the higher number
of cases of this kind, with 8 merchants overall out of 13 (corresponding to 62
percent) providing at least order confirmation and/or a notification for occurring
delivery , in most cases via text or at least via e-mail. In Spain too the majority of
merchants (3 out of 5) offer this kind of pre-delivery contact to customers, mainly
through a notification of delivery only and in one case with also a notification for
order confirmation, sent by text or at least by e-mail. Italy lags behind, with only
one case of merchant allowing customers to receive a notice of order
confirmation and then of occurring delivery, always via e-mail or text. Lastly, the
most interesting cases can be found in Germany, even if they represent a smaller
portion of the overall retailers addressed (3 out of 9). They all advice customers of
the moment in which delivery is really going to take place, in one case through a
simple text (Douglas); on the contrary Otto Group in addition to the text/e-mail
for communicating moment and point of delivery/collection when it comes to
that, arranges a call the evening before (being the service a next day one, it is
therefore the same day of order issuing) in order to inform the customer if the
courier (which is an internal Hermes employee) is going to perform delivery in
the morning or in the afternoon. The third case instead is the one of Baur
Versand, which can guarantee that the text or the e-mail notifying that delivery is
going to be carried out is sent half an hour before it actually happens. We can
therefore drive out that internally controlled logistics is a driver of better
communication and contact with final customers, which can surely be perceived
by individual buyers as an added value to the service, reducing uncertainty
around the effective moment of delivery and squeezing the phenomenon of
unattended deliveries; in this direction, Germany has a significant role with
respect to its European neighbors, resembling more to American and British
examples.
4.1.5 Asian countries (China, India, Japan and South Korea)
Changing completely the geographical focus, the last continent constituting
an object of research for this thesis is the Asian one and four countries have been
specifically identified as the most developed once in terms of participation to the
online market and therefore have been included in the analysis to provide a more
global view of the state-of-the-art situation; these countries are China, India,
Japan and South Korea and also for them the first 25 actors of the national top
web retailers’ ranking in terms of sales’ volumes have been submitted to research,
for a total of 100 merchants.
Some of them however has to be immediately excluded from the database.
Four Chinese retailers belong to the category of non-interesting merchants for
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
119
further analysis: first, Sc4888.com is a website providing information on the
Internet and therefore does not arrange any logistics activities for provision on
products to final consumers; then, two players in the General industry (360Mart
and Mailebei) and one in the Others cluster (51sheyuan) have shut down their
whole activities after 2013. Moving to India, we find that the online market has
changed much from 2013 since 7 out of the 25 taken from the ranking have closed
at least their online business (Buytheprice, 100bestbuy, Zovi, Inkfruit, Seventy
MM, Indiaplaza and Be Stylish). Only one instead is the Japanese retailer present
in the ranking having shut down the business (Ec-current). Finlly in South
Korean context we have one Informatics company (Ahnlab) of no interest since it
only sells software solutions and one clothes’ retailer (VanillaMint) having shut
down its Dot Com business since 2013. Therefore, overall cases that must be
taken out from the actual database with respect to 2013 situation are 14, reducing
the sample size from 100 to 86 retailers addressed.
4.1.5.1 Breakdown by channel, web technology and commodity sector
Country Dot Com/traditional pure player/multichannel Total
China Dot Com pure player 16
traditional multichannel 5
China Total 21
India Dot Com pure player 12
traditional multichannel 6
India Total 18
Japan Dot Com pure player 3
traditional multichannel 21
Japan Total 24
South Korea Dot Com pure player 14
traditional multichannel 9
South Korea Total 23
Total 86 Table 146 - Asian retailers' market channel
The first variable to be tackled regards the nature of retailers’ business. From
the table we can observe that Japan has a great majority of merchants which are
traditional ones having enlarged their business by adding the online channel (21
cases out of 24, corresponding to 88 percent) and it regards pretty much all the
commodity sectors; this situation, although a little taken to extremes, resembles
occidental countries in which many are the players in the ranking born many
years ago as traditional retailers and having strengthen their position in the
market for years before deciding to follow the more recent trend of resorting also
to the web channel. In the three other Asian countries the situation instead is the
opposite: indeed big is the portion of Dot Com pure players in the ranking,
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
120
representing a 61 percent of the cases in South Korea, a bigger 67 percent in India
and even reaching the 76 percent in China. These online players have
experienced a widespread diffusion in all the industries, with a particularly clear
relevance in the General sector (which can be comprehensible as traditional
shops selling all the possible types of products are more difficult to be managed
with respect to an online market for them) and especially in the Clothing
industry (much innovative fact with respect to US and Europe). This
phenomenon expresses again the scarce presence of big giants in the Asian online
market and since the market is still far from being developed and most actors are
newly entrants, it is a representation of the need for companies to born with a
very flexible and web-suitable model in order to enter the market competitively
and not leaving it too soon.
This just described
situation is similarly
reflected in the choice
of the technology to
support the company’s
web channel: in Japan
most of the players,
corresponding to a 79
percent of the overall
cases and being almost
all traditional
multichannel retailers,
provide their
customers with a website that can only be
accessed by fixed desktops; on the contrary the few merchants offering a mobile
access are also the ones performing the fastest delivery services (at most same
day). Almost balanced situation can be found in South Korea, where 11 (i.e. 48
percent) allow customers to navigate the website and submit their orders from
mobile devices and they also represent the great majority of retailers carrying out
services faster or at most equal to next day, while the remaining 52 percent is
made of merchants with desktop only access. For what concerns China and India
instead, much higher percentages of mobile players can be found: indeed, 78
percent of Indian retailers and 86 percent of Chinese ones (mostly Dot Com pure
players) have a mobile application available for customers to increase visit
frequency and lever on impulse buys; the remaining small portions consist of
actors offering desktop access only, but they mostly belong to General and
Others sectors (while a strong presence of Clothing and Informatics players can
be found in the mobile cluster) and they offer services classified as “not fast”.
Country desktop/mobile Total
China desktop 3
mobile 18
China Total 21
India desktop 4
mobile 14
India Total 18
Japan desktop 19
mobile 5
Japan Total 24
South Korea desktop 12
mobile 11
South Korea Total 23
Total 86 Table 147 - Asian retailers' web technology
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
121
Again, China and India, which are more recently developed and less
“Occidentalized”, follow a differentiated trend.
For what regards mostly populated commodity sectors in the online Asian
market, both in China and India we can notice a strong predominance of the
General industry (10 cases in China, corresponding alone to a 48 percent; 8 in
India therefore a 44 percent); Informatics and Clothing industries have up to now
conquered small shares of the market (in China a 19 percent for Informatics and
general electronics and a 14 percent for Clothing; in India they count for a 22 and
17 percent respectively), a little higher than poorly diffused industries such as
Country Commodity sector Total
China Clothing 3
General 10
Grocery 2
Home & Furniture 1
Informatics & general electronics 4
Others 1
China Totale 21
India Clothing 3
General 8
Informatics & general electronics 4
Others 2
Publishing 1
India Totale 18
Japan Clothing 4
Cosmetics & Perfumery 2
General 3
Informatics & general electronics 9
Others 5
Publishing 1
Japan Totale 24
South Korea Clothing 11
Cosmetics & Perfumery 2
General 5
Grocery 2
Home & Furniture 1
Others 1
Publishing 1
South Korea Totale 23
Total 86
Table 148 - Asian retailers' sector
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
122
Grocery (present only in China with a 10 percent), Others (one retailer in China
and two in India), Home & Furniture (one only case in China) and Publishing
(one case too but in India). So most of the retailers born lately in these two
countries have the market objective of not specify themselves in a particular
products’ category but offer a great variety of items. A different situations, that
pretty much resemples the one of occidental countries can be instead found in
Japan where, excepted for the less significant cluster of Other industries, the
most part of retailers belong to Informatics (38 percent) and Clothing sectors (17
percent), with also a presence of General actors (13 percent) before the sporadic
cases in Cosmetics (2 out of 24) and Publishing sectors (only 1). Interesting to
notice that the situation is similar also in South Korea, because even if
Informatics is absent, the biggest part of market is occupied by Clothing sector
alone with its 11 merchants (corresponding to a 48 percent); then also some cases
from General (5 and therefore a 22 percent), Cosmetics & Perfumery (2 retailers)
and Grocery (again 2), while the others are definitely lagging behind with just one
case. The development of online market in South Korea is so following a trend
which is closer to occidental countries, but it is absolutely driven by Clothing
retailers, most of which have setup their business quite recently following a pure
Dot Com model and represent the biggest sales. We can find overall that
Informatics sector finds less relevance in Asian countries with respect to
American and European continent and especially Grocery industry, which
presents also interesting cases in the occidental world for what concerns
innovation in terms of speed and delivery features, is almost absent in the online
market of these countries.
4.1.5.2 Split by delivery speed
The following database’s field is much important and defines the speed of the delivery process. Starting from Chinese situation, we can find just one fast retailer that is the Informatics Dot Com 360Buy.com website of Jingdong company and that is able to serve its customers in five cities within three hours (or at most offering an Overnight delivery service in which products are received between 19:00 and 22:00 if they are ordered before 15:00 the same day) thanks to its internally owned logistics infrastructure. Then three are the cases of same day operators: one is the ranking top player Tmall, grocer belonging to Alibaba company and delivering items in two Chinese cities by 22:00 of the same day of order issuing again exploiting its internal logistics branch Cainiao and its fleet of refrigerated vans; the other two cases are both belonging to Informatics sector and are able to offer this type of service almost on the whole national territory, but one has its own logistics (Gome Electrical Appliances) while the other exploits an outsourced operator (Dangdang); in any case, all the three same day retailers impose customers to submit orders by 11:00 in the morning if they want to be sure to receive items within the day.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
123
One only merchant instead provides a next day delivery service and it is again
an Informatics one, the traditional merchant Suning, imposing a hourly limit for
order submission at 13:00 in order to do not overcome the following day for
delivery and resorting to an outsourced logistics provider. Finally a 76 percent of
merchants can be considered as “not fast, sometimes because of unspecified
timings for order preparation but mostly due to the fact that delivery in such a
large country takes at least two/three days and reaching peaks of also six/seven
days in few cases.
Moving to India we can find a higher portion of overall interesting retailers
for the foucus of this research: in fact, two offer services performed in few hours,
six stay beyond the same day and one beyond the next day limit for the
accomplishment of final delivery, accounting for a 50 percent globally. The two
fast services are not offered by merchants at the top positions of the ranking, but
the two Informatics companies Univercell (that is ranked 11th) and The Mobile
Store (ranked 21st); they both exploit internal logistics and in particular the first is
developing a pilot project for delivery in 4 hours in Chennai, while the second
delivers in two hours in many different cities and carries out distribution
activities up to 22:00, but asking customers to not submit orders after 20:00 for
Country Delivery time Total
China < 6h 1
same day 3
next day 1
not fast 16
China Total 21
India 1-2h 1
< 6h 1
same day 6
next day 1
not fast 9
India Total 18
Japan < 1h 1
same day 8
next day 5
not fast 10
Japan Total 24
South Korea same day 3
next day 2
not fast 18
South Korea Total 23
Total 86
Table 149 - Asian retailers' delivery time
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
124
receiving this type of very fast service. The six same day cases involve retailers of
different sectors, mostly General (Snapdeal, TV18 Home Shopping and Infibeam)
but also Informatics with Flipkart, Clothing with Myntra and Others with Firstcry
(that in particular sells products for baby care); the two retailers with highest
market share (Flipkart and Myntra) have developed an internal logistics
infrastructure for the performance of this service, while the other four players
have to rely on externally outsourced operators; all of them impose a limitation
to the time of order submission in order to guarantee that same day delivery is
respected and this limitation varies between 11:00 and 14:00 at most, while they
mainly operate until 21:00 with the exception of Firstcry, whose couriers
distribute products until midnight. One only is then the next day retailer,
Lenskart, but little information are available. Going out of the area of interest,
nine are the merchants not offering fast delivery services and again identifying
the distribution activity as the most critical one, taking from 1/3 up to even 7 days
to be performed (and sometimes no information are even available).
To follow, Japan is the Asian country with the highest percentage of retailers
operating in less than 24 hours (14 overall, corresponding to a 58 percent); just
one is fast (top player in the ranking Rakuten, a Dot Com operator belonging to
Others sector, distributing products 24 hours a day to serve customers in Tokyo
in an average time of 60 minutes (but reaching also minimums of 20 minutes)
with its internal logistics), while eight are the same day retailer and five are the
next day ones. Same day retailer mainly belong to the Informatics sector
(BicCamera, Dospara, Pasoclom Club, Sound House and SourceNext), while a
couple comes from Clothing industry (Start Today and Uniqlo) and Yamada
Denki to the General sector; they mostly resort to outsourcing logistics (excepted
for the case of Dospara that has its internal system) and apply times’ limitations
for order submission that are much different one from the other (moving from
6:00 and 9:00 in the morning for Sound House and Start Today respectively to
15:00 at 17:00 for BicCamera and SourceNext). Also next day retailers are mainly
informatics ones (Yodobashi, NTT-X and Mouse Computer), with the addition of
General company Neowing and of the clothes’ seller Point only; they all rely on
outsourced couriers and do not have a similar behavior for what concerns hourly
time limitations for order issuing (some have a limit at 13:00 or 15:00, e.g. Mouse
Computer and NTT-X, while some others have no limitation at all). We can so
notice that, even if really fast cases are not so present, Japan reports a significant
number of interesting cases which attest its degree of development already
comparable with the one of many occidental countries. Then we can find a 42
percent of cases of not fast retailers, again mostly highlighting a time window
around 2/4 days (but reaching also 5 or even 10 days in some specific cases) for
delivery.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
125
Lastly, a 22 percent of interesting players can be found also in South Korea,
where no operators perform deliveries faster than same day, but then three offer
the same day service (the three top players in the ranking, the two grocers Lotte
Mart and E-mart exploiting their internal logistics infrastructure and the
Publishing company Yes24 resorting to an external courier, all imposing a time
limitation for order submission blurring between 10:00 and 15:00 also according
to the city in which the process takes place), while two actors at the end of the
ranking (Clothing retailers Gaenso and Minsshop) ship products through an
outsourced operators that reach customers on the following day if the order is
issued by 13:00 for the first and by 17:00 for the second. Interesting to notice how
South Korea is the only Asian country in which Grocery not only has a presence
in the online market, but it is also the source of most innovative services. Out of
this group a great majority of cases is instead represented by “slow” delivery
services (78 percent), among which we mostly find the big number of Clothing
merchants that were present in the ranking, in which order preparation can even
be specifically performed within the same day of submission, but the criticality is
linked to the infrastructure for domestic shipments, that allow orders to be
received in a quite large timeframe, from 2/3 days up to 10 days. To sum up, we
can find a significant number of retailers belonging to the field of interest of
services faster than next day, comparable with the one of the other previously
addressed territories: indeed they are 33, with a strong contribution of mainly
Japan (14) and India (9), but also a relevant presence of China and South Korea (5
merchants each), even if very fast services are unfortunately quite rare. For the
following analyses we will therefore address these 33 retailers only.
4.1.5.3 In-depth analysis of logistics providers, related cost, coverage and type
Tackling the list of
service providers
chosen to be the
unique operators for a
specific merchant with
whom building a
strong partnership to
personalize the service,
we can see that it is very short, including
just one case for each country excepted for South Korea in which no retailers
have developed such a relationship with their logistics providers. The Chinese
merchant belonging to this cluster is the number one player in the ranking T-
Mall, a Dot Com grocer under the ownership of Alibaba that, even due to the
Country Service provider Total
China Cainiao 1
China Total 1
India Ekart 1
India Total 1
Japan Yamato Transport 1
Japan Total 1
Total 3 Table 150 - Asian retailers' service providers
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
126
peculiarity of items managed (which are perishable if fresh or that need to be
kept in very restricted temperature conditions in order not to interrupt the cold
chain and preserving their characteristics), has developed internally a logistics
sub-company called Cainiao whose fleet of refrigerated vans and services are
exclusively exploited by T-Mall itself. Also the Indian retailer Flipkart, Dot Com
seller of informatics and general electronics products and second player in the
national ranking, have established an internal logistics company called Ekart to
which it uniquely resort for all its handling and distribution activities. Differently,
Japanese clothing retailer Start Today, at the second place of its national ranking
too, relies on the external logistics company Yamato Transport only. All these
merchants are able to offer, thanks to these partnership, quite fast services (all
same day); however, the fact that they occupy the very first positions in terms of
sales’ shares means that only the few really biggest Asian companies are
economically able to put in place such a kind of relationships, evidently having a
high bargaining power and representing a highly appealing business for logistics
companies partnering with them (in the case of external operators) or having a
so strong economic and financial position to make them able to undertake such a
kind of huge investments. Merchants having the possibility of doing this are
evidently much less in Asia than what happens in American and European
countries.
Country Cost Total
China fixed + free beyond threshold 1
variable 3
variable + free beyond threshold 1
China Total 5
India fixed 1
fixed + free beyond threshold 2
free 3
variable 3
India Total 9
Japan fixed 7
fixed + free beyond threshold 5
free 1
variable 1
Japan Total 14
South Korea fixed + free beyond threshold 1
variable 4
South Korea Total 5
Total 33 Table 151 - Asian retailers' delivery cost
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
127
Starting from the description of the kind of fee applied for the delivery service
provision, we can immediately observe a huge component of fixed fees for what
regards Japanese retailers: in fact 12 out of the 14 retailers in this country impose a
fixed additional amount of money for delivery to their customers, which at most
in five cases can disappear by reaching a certain expense’s threshold; this fee
stays in a large range which goes from around 200/300 Yen in the cheapest cases
(mainly Clothing companies and next day services) up to 2000 Yen (4000 Yen to
reach more remote islands) for each bought item in the most expensive cases
(Informatics providers of same day services). Also the threshold to reachin order
to have delivery given for free is much vary, from a minimum of 1500 Yen (in the
case of Sound House) up to 10000 Yen (for Neowing retailer), according to the
courier employed. This situation makes Japan much looking alike the other
European countries (mainly due to the recourse to external providers). Only
Pasoclom Club Informatics company applies a fee which is variable depending on
the type of product and the distance to be covered, while BicCamera does not
impose any additional fee for delivery. An opposite situation can be found instead
in China and South Korea with a prevalence of the variable fee: indeed four
companies for each country apply a fee which changes according to the amount
of money paid for products, the distance travelled, the single retailer (as often
these Dot Com companies act as collectors of offers from many small retailers) or
also on the degree of fidelity of customers (and therefore its profile according to
the number of orders that he/she has already made through the same website); in
one only case the fee can be deleted by reaching a minimum expense of 400$ (it’s
the case of Suning informatics retailer). Both countries report only one case each
of merchant applying a fixed fee, which however can become free by reaching a
certain threshold: they are the Chinese informatics Gome Electrical Appliances
(fee of 5 Yen, given for free if at least 99 Yen of products are ordered, which all
things considered represent a very low fee) and the South Korean Clothing
retailer Minsshop (again a low value, with 2,50$ of fee but deleted if at least 50$
are paid for products)and they are the last players in the national ranking by
considering cases of our focus, so the ones with the smallest market position.
This means that Chinese and Korean online operators have structures flexible
enough to avoid the imposture of fixed expenses, maybe also due to the fact that
they are smaller an younger players with respect to already more established
Japanese ones. India represents instead an example of perfect equilibrium, with
three cases for each of the fixed, variable and free fee clusters: players in the
lowest ranking positions, even if among them there is also the fastest service,
unexpectedly are the ones not imposing any fee for delivery; the Flipkart,
Snapdeal and TV18 Home Shopping apply a variable fee according to the items’
expense staying around 100 Rs per article in the General sector and 200 Rs per
item in the Informatics sector; the remaining three merchants apply a fixed fee
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
128
(40 Rs in the General case, 69 Rs in the Informatics case and 199 Rs in the
Clothing one) which can become free in two cases after having reached a certain
threshold (500 Rs for General Infibeam, a higher boundary of 999 Rs for Clothing
Myntra). Difficult is therefore to provide a clear identification for the Indian
situation in terms of costs.
By looking at the area served, we can observe a comparable presence of
national and local initiatives in almost all countries excepted for India, in which
faster initiatives have mostly an only local development. Starting from China, the
three Informatics retailers’ initiatives (which are mostly outsourced excepted for
Gome) find a wider national coverage, while fastest and most innovative
initiatives (i.e. the three hours service by Jingdong and the same day grocery of
Tmall, both internally performed) are available just in few cities (6 for the first
merchant, only Beijing and Shanghai for the second).
Moving to Japan,
we can see that more
than a half of retailers
(again mainly
Informatics ones) are
able to cover the whole
national territory with
their same or next day
services; on contrary,
six retailers (which are
mostly same day and
report also the fast
service by Rakuten) can
be performed in an area which can
include at most a dozen of cities (Start Today, Sound House and Point service
that can reach the whole Kanto area or more) or Tokyo city alone (some wards
for same day initiatives by BicCamera and Uniqlo, while only four wards for less-
than-one-hour Rakuten service). Also South Korea reports a quite expectable
situation, with next day merchants able to reach the whole national coverage,
while same day ones cannot overcome the area around few cities. Different
instead is the case of India: only one retailer has a national coverage, but it is also
the only one providing next day delivery; all the remaining eight merchants offer
fast or same day services and this is the reason why they are not able to reach
more than local territories: it could be many selected cities in case of especially
same day operators or a single city (e.g. only Delhi for Snapdeal and Chennai for
the pilot project by Univercell). We can globally infer that the more limited
Country National coverage Total
China No 2
Yes 3
China Total 5
India No 8
Yes 1
India Total 9
Japan No 6
Yes 8
Japan Total 14
South Korea No 3
Yes 2
South Korea Total 5
Total 33 Table 152 - Asian retailers' geographical coverage
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
129
coverage of Asian retailers with respect to American and European one could be
explained by the lower degree of development of logistics services and their
related infrastructures for the online channel.
Moving to the analysis of the typology of logistics provider performing the
delivery and all the other handling activities needed for the provision of the order
to the final customer, we can again notice how the Japanese situation differs from
the one of its Asian neighbors: in fact, while in the other countries there is a
relevant share of companies having developed an internal logistics infrastructure
and service, in Japan the 86 percent of retailers relies on an external operator.
Internal logistics characterize as always two of the fastest services, which are
informatics retailer Dospara’s same day and in particular the only fast initiative of
the country, the one of top player Rakuten with its internally developed sub-
company Rakubin that differentiates itself from the offers of other merchants by
reaching customers in less than one hour and by performing deliveries all day
long (24/24h). For what concerns the other 12 Japanese actors, their services are
quite homogeneous one with the other, offering quite standardized same day and
next day initiatives as they rely on outsourcing of logistics activities to external
providers which are almost the same for each retailer: in fact, the two mostly
addressed courier companies are Yamato Transport and Sagawa Express with its
particularly employed shipping service by air. Japanese context of little
specialization of the offer and general homogeneity on timings which can sound
good to customers but do not suggest the opportunity of further improvement
much resembles the one of European countries as France, Germany, Italy and
Spain and lacks of innovative intention for future development of the services.
Country Logistics type Total
China internal 3
outsourcing 2
China Total 5
India internal 5
outsourcing 4
India Total 9
Japan internal 2
outsourcing 12
Japan Total 14
South Korea internal 2
outsourcing 3
South Korea Total 5
Total 33 Table 153 - Asian retailers' logistics type
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
130
Differently from this, in the other three Asian countries we can find an
interesting percentage of merchants resorting to internal efforts for serving their
customers: indeed they represent the 40 percent of South Korean overview, the
56 percent in India and up to a 60 percent in China. In all these countries, all the
fast solutions rely on internal logistics; they are the Indian FED (Fastest Expert
Delivery) service offered by informatics The Mobile Store in less than two hours,
pilot project of informatics Univercell in four hours and again an informatics
company Jingdong with its three hour service in China. We can also find many
same day initiatives involving again informatics merchants such as Chinese Gome
Electrical Appliances and the Indian Flipkart with its logistics sub-company Ekart
specifically built up, but also a relevant portion of retailers belonging to the
Grocery industry and having therefore particular needs for what regards products
they handle: in this group we can find the Chinese Tmall with its internal
logistics branch Cainiao and the two South Korean grocers Lotte Mart and E-
mart. One only merchant, the Indian Lenskart, is offering a service called
Lightning Fast Delivery through its own internal infrastructure that reaches
customers on the next day of order submission. We can observe how the top
two/three players of the ranking for each of these countries are included in this
group on internal logistics, meaning that they have reached such a position in the
market to justify the efforts in developing a specialized own service. The recourse
to outsourcing can be found instead for most of the merchants offering next day
and same day initiatives, most of them Dot Com players occupying more
backward positions in the ranking, meaning that they are players not having a so
strong presence in the market and/or an economic solidity to justify an
investment in a personalized logistics system. In addition, the externally sourced
services are not even homogeneous among themselves as almost no preferential
couriers are indicated by merchants, excepted for XpressBees operator cited by
Indian Firstcry company and GTX provider by South Korean Yes24. Probably the
more recent development of the online market in these last three countries and
their higher degree of specialization in the channel with so many Dot Com pure
players born are reasons that explain this relevant share of internal logistics,
leaving room to the assumption that many will continue to be these cases and
that these services may probably continue to improve and squeeze their timings.
Interesting to lastly notice that crowd-sourcing models have not been found at all
among the merchants constituting the sample of research.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
131
4.1.5.4 Logistics technologies and alternatives to last-mile delivery
Country Transportation means Total
China electric bikes 1
refrigerated vans 1
China Total 2
Japan airplane 4
van 1
Japan Total 5
South Korea refrigerated vans 2
South Korea Total 2
Total 9 Table 154 - Asian retailers' transportation means
Little can be said instead for what regards the peculiarity of transportation
means exploited in the delivery service provision, but also here we can observe
the difference of Japanese situation with respect to others. In fact, a relevant
portion of same and next day services (corresponding to a 29 percent of the total)
is carried out by utilizing air shipments and this is the case of the merchants
resorting preferably to Sagawa Express logistics. It is a way of transporting items
which can surely be put in place only by an external logistics operator serving
many merchants and amortizing therefore the investment in such a great
infrastructure; it also allows to cover longer distances in a limited time, but due
to the timings needed for items’ boarding, landing and all the other related
handling activities, together with the obvious necessity of adding another
distributive methodology in order to perform the last-mile part of the delivery
process, it cannot be associated with services shorter than at least same day. Then
one is the case in which the retailer declares of resorting to vans only for its
delivery and this kind of control on the mean utilized can be assured by the fact
that it is Dospara merchant and its logistics process is internally owned. The
remaining part of retailers instead, corresponding to 64 percent of the overall
cases, do not have any visibility on which means will be exploited for arranging
the orders’ distribution. Excepted for the air transportation options, it much
resembles the German situation, in which no relevantly innovative or
personalized vehicles and/or initiatives can be found. For what regards the other
countries, a couple of cases of refrigerated vans’ usage can be observed in South
Korea and one in China, corresponding to the online grocers which have
developed their own infrastructure in order to keep continuous control over the
conditions of products’ journey. One only case of particular interest is present in
China and is related to the fast three hours delivery service offered by Jingdong
informatics retailer: in fact, in order to cover in little time distances in the six
cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan and Shenyang not only
traditional vans are utilized, but internally employed couriers often resort to the
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
132
use of electric bicycles, which represent an ecological-friendly way of avoiding
urban traffic conditions for offering such a sustainable and efficient service that is
very interesting to be noted in the Chinese context. However, India do not even
have one case of merchant declaring to utilize a particular vehicle for distribution
activities, so we can generally observe that this phenomenon doesn’t reach a
sufficient presence in the Asian continent.
Country Click&collect in
store Parcel locker Other collection
point Total
China no No no 4
yes No no 1
China Total 5
India no No no 7
yes no 1
yes No no 1
India Total 9
Japan no No no 8
yes 1
yes No no 4
yes 1
Japan Total 14
South Korea no No no 3
yes No no 2
South Korea Total 5
Total 33 Table 155 - Asian retailers' last-mile alternatives
Also the presence of relevant alternatives to last-mile home delivery is quite
limited: in fact only 9 merchants overall out of the total 33 (corresponding to a 27
percent), most of them (5 out of 9) coming from Japan, offer to customers the
opportunity of ordering items online and then collecting them at the stores; but
in some cases the pickup in store can be performed in fast times, within the same
day of order submission on the website (in the example of Korean grocers Lotte
Mart and E-Mart) or even after only thirty minutes if the items are already
available in stock (the case of Yodobashi Japanese informatics retailer); in most of
the other cases the date for the pickup can be agreed between merchant and
customer or at least a phone call is provided to the last one to let him/her know
that the order is ready to be collected. This represents a quite well developed
situation, in which pickup in store last-mile alternative can also be better
managed than what happens in many other European countries. Just two instead
are the cases in which another collection point different from the shops owned by
the merchant is offered to customers for the collection of his/her personal orders,
but they are of particular interest: indeed the first one is provided by the Japanese
retailer Rakuten through its own logistics Rakubin and it allows customers to
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
133
insert at the moment of the order whichever delivery address they want, even if it
doesn’t correspond to their home or office but to a shop, a restaurant or even a
park in which they are going to be at the moment of delivery; this is surely made
possible by a very well managed delivery process, that keeps a pretty much
continuous contact with the customer up to 15 minutes before delivery. The
second case is the one of another Japanese company, the general retailer
Neowing, that has some convenience stores partnered with terminals for
collection. The phenomenon of parcel lockers is instead absent in the Asian
continent, thing that happened also in the European one. So we can say that even
if lagging behind the more innovative US and UK examples, situation of last-mile
alternatives is not so much backward with respect to European context and the
present cases, even if limited in number, are noteworthy for their particular
management and also speed.
4.1.5.5 Additional services: real-time tracking, date/time choice and pre-delivery contacts
Moving to the analysis of the typology of logistics provider performing the delivery and all the other handling activities needed for the provision of the order to the final customer, we can again notice how the Japanese situation differs from the one of its Asian neighbors: in fact, while in the other countries there is a relevant share of companies having developed an internal logistics infrastructure and service, in Japan the 86 percent of retailers relies on an external operator. Internal logistics characterize as always two of the fastest services, which are informatics retailer Dospara’s same day and in particular the only fast initiative of the country, the one of top player Rakuten with its internally developed sub-
company Rakubin that differentiates itself from the offers of other merchants by reaching customers in less than one hour and by performing deliveries all day long (24/24h). The availability of
systems for real-time
tracking of orders is
pretty much developed
also in the Asian
countries, reporting a
situation of control over the progress of products along the various steps of their
journey which has nothing to envy to the European context: in fact, a 55 percent
of Indian merchants, a 78 percent of Japanese ones, an 80 percent of Chinese
Country Real-time tracking Total
China no 1
yes 4
China Total 5
India no 4
yes 5
India Total 9
Japan no 3
yes 11
Japan Total 14
South Korea yes 5
South Korea Total 5
Total 33 Table 156 - Asian retailers' tracking system
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
134
actors and up to a 100 percent of South Korean ones offer this type of visibility to
final customers.
For what regards the agreement between retailer and final customer upon the
exact date and/or time window for the delivery, we can see a relevant amount of
this kind of initiatives in almost all the Asian countries, with the exception of
India with only one case. Just one is the case of merchant allowing to choose only
the date of delivery, arranging an appointment with some days of advance (it’s
the case of the Chinese informatics retailer Dangdang). In many cases the
customer is left free to chose among different time windows of few hours each
within the day; in fact the five Japanese merchants Dospara, NTT-X, Neowing,
SourceNext and Point offer the choice among many quite short time windows
(8:00-12:00, 12:00-14:00, 14:00-16:00, 16:00-18:00 and 18:00-21:00), the Chinese
operator Gome allows to chose among less and longer timeframes (9:00-13:00,
13:00-18:00 and 18:00-21:00), while other actors offer a last time window later in
the evening (it’s the case of Chinese TMall and Jingdong) or even a very short
midnight window between 23:30 and 00:15 (the only Indian case of Infibeam
retailer). The remaining seven merchants, most of them belonging to Japanese
context and the other two are the South Korean grocers, allow instead to set the
exact date and time during the day. Therefore, the issue of unattended home
delivery is quite well addressed by Asian countries.
Country Day/time window choice Total
China no 1
yes 4
China Total 5
India no 8
yes 1
India Total 9
Japan no 4
yes 10
Japan Total 14
South Korea no 3
yes 2
South Korea Total 5
Total 33 Table 157 - Asian retailers' day/time choice
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
135
Dealing lastly with the description of contacts established before the final
delivery fulfillment between courier and customers, we can observe that the
situation is quite poor, excepted for some more numerous cases found in the
Japanese country. Unfortunately, most of these Japanese cases (the three
merchants providing confirmation and delivery notification and one of the two
noting delivery only) are just sending an e-mail for notifying the reach of a
certain step in the delivery process, which is the most impersonal and least
effective method of connecting with customers. Opposite is the case of the fifth
Japanese merchant, Rakuten, which via mobile application not only provides a
forecast of the expected time for the delivery process at the moment of order
confirmation, but then advices the customer 15 minutes before the delivery is
going to occur. South Korean case of Gaenso clothes’ seller just involves the
dispatch of a text as notification of order confirmation, while the same
notification is provided by Indian The Mobile Store but through a phone call
made by a retailer’s employee 10 minutes after the order has been taken in
charge. Lastly, the Chinese traditional informatics retailer Suning sets up a phone
call between the final customer and its assigned courier in order to arrange all the
details regarding the delivery. We can therefore conclude that from the side of
direct contacts with customers, the Asian offer is quite poor of interesting cases,
with the exception of the particularly innovative initiative set up by the Japanese
Rakuten.
4.1.6 Conclusions and insights from first empirical analysis
The single-variable classifications have allowed to answer to all the questions,
while the double-variable analyses have provided additional and more deep
information on the last three questions.
Starting with single-variable classifications, we can summarize, variable by
variable, the obtained insights:
Country Pre-delivery contacts Total
China details arranged before delivery 1
China Total 5
India confirmation note 1
India Total 9
Japan confirmation and delivery note 3
delivery note 2
Japan Total 14
South Korea confirmation note 1
South Korea Total 5
Total 33 Table 158 - Asian retailers' contacts
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
136
Service provider: the practice of partnering with one logistics operator
exclusively in order to build a strong relationship, to personalize and
improve the service together is not much diffused among merchants
operating in the online sector. Only the United States account for a at
least sufficient number of cases (23 percent of the overall merchants), but
only because they resort to crowd-sourcing logistics models and therefore
they are linked to one specific operator providing its mobile application
and its network of couriers, which has to be matched with the merchants’
needs. An higher recourse to partnerships, when retailers are not able to
perform their own logistics activities by themselves, could be a way of
making delivery services always more specific and fast.
Nature of the merchants’ business (i.e. Dot Com/traditional): Dot Com
retailers represent a minority of the overall cases in American and
European countries; Germany, Spain and Italy reports a bit higher
percentages of online pure players with respect to United Kingdom and
United States, but they correspond to the merchants offering the slowest
services (most of them not constituting an object of interest because they
take more than 24 hours to be performed); while US, UK and French Dot
Com retailers, even if representing a smaller share of the national overall
actors, account for interesting services in terms of delivery timing,
especially in the field of Clothing commodity sector. Japan follows a trend
which is in line with the one of these three just mentioned countries (with
a strong occidental characterization), while for the other Asian countries
the situation is exactly the opposite: in fact they report a majority of Dot
Com cases. So we can observe that online markets developed earlier in
time are characterized by a strong presence of traditional players, while
lately born online contexts are theatre of a strong contribution of newly
born actors specialized in the eCommerce only.
Technologic devices’ support (i.e. desktop/mobile): the situation is more
mixed for what concerns this variable. The percentage of merchants
having developed a mobile access for increasing the degree of market
penetration and the frequency of access is pretty high in almost all
American and European countries (excepted for Italian situation, which is
less developed with respect to its neighbouring countries). In the Asian
continent instead we can find two countries with a strong penetration of
mobile applications among web retailers (India and China), an almost
equilibrated context between mobile and desktop technological support in
South Korea (there is a little higher presence of merchants offering access
to their website via desktop only), while mobile accesses find very low
development in the Japanese country. Being the market less developed
and players having a weaker market position in economic terms, Asian
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
137
retailers find less advantages in developing such technologies or probably
customers do not attach a so significant added value to them. Overall, the
mobile apllications’ penetration is quite high and so same are the
advantages implied.
Sectors: the two sectors counting overall the highest amount of web
merchants are Clothing and Informatics & general electronics; this
happens in particular in the American and European continents, even if
the share between the two can vary; in fact Clothing occupies the first
position (if we exclude the group of minor sectors collected in the Others
cluster and not internally homogeneous) in US, UK, France and Spain,
while Germany and Italy report a higher share of the Informatics sector.
Also General has a significant presence in some European countries (e.g.
United Kingdom and Germany) and we can notice the interesting case of
Italy with a strong presence of merchants operating in the Publishing
industry (which is a quite unusual sector for web development and in fact
it comprehends all the slowest delivery services). As seen before for the
nature of the business, Japan is closer to the occidental situation than to
the oriental one also on this variable, with Informatics and Clothing as
most populated industries. For what regards the other Asian countries
instead the situation is different: Clothing sector finds a big presence only
in the South Korean territory, while in China and India the mostrly
populated industry is the General one; Informatics too loses relevance.
This suggests a differenciated approach for further moves: while these last
Asian countries need to increase their footprint in more traditional
globally developed sectors, in order also to make themselves competitive
on a worldwide level, the other countries objective has to be the one of
populating with online initiatives new industries such as Grocery and
Others, in order to increase the offer as mush as possible.
Delivery timings: the biggest portion of US online merchants offers same
day delivery options, while for most of the other occidental countries the
most served option is the next day one. Asian countries instead report a
situation which is closer to the American one, offering mainly same day
services. Really fast deliveries instead (i.e. the one taking less than six
hours in order to be carried out) represent a small percentage of the
overall retailers and we can find few interesting cases mostly in the United
States, France and India, with a poorer participation of United Kingdom,
Germany, Spain, China and Japan. While this trend of fast deliveries is so
uncommon in all the countries and will surely be object of future
investments everywhere, the main limitation is related to the relative
slowness of European cases with respect to the other continents, which
can be a sign of low degree of experimentation and innovation up to now.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
138
Costs: most countries impose a fixed delivery fee in order to be sure of
paying back efforts for the delivery service provision (especially if it is
outsourced) no matter the amount of money paid for ordered items; this
happens in fact in the United States, all the European countries and also
Japan, always more following occidental trends. The other three Asian
countries instead apply in most cases a fee which varies according to the
amount of money paid for the order, the size and weight of the products
to be transported and the distance to be covered; this is the expression of a
more flexible service, which allows customers to have a sort of “control” on
their fee. A variable fee is the mirroring image of a variable cost structure
for most Asian web companies, which in this way are also able to offer fast
services without incurring in too high investments; on contrary, US and
Europe (together with Japan) are more stuck in a situation of fixed
investments, which makes them less willing to innovate in flexible and fast
services.
Geographical coverage: almost in all countries the percentage of
merchants able to offer their delivery services in the whole national
territory is higher than the one of retailers with only a local coverage, with
the exception of India in which the number of local operators far
overcomes the one of national ones (8 out of the total 9 retailers). This
means that all countries have developed a certain degree of homogeneity
in the service provision, but it is also due to the fact that many initiatives
are next day and therefore have a significant amount of time available for
reaching also the further territories.
Logistics type: while crowd-sourcing innovative models are applied only in
the US context (excepted for one French case), in all the European
countries and in Japan outsourced logistics operators play a major role in
the eCommerce. Opposite is instead the case China, India and South
Korea in which a much relevant portion of merchants have developed
their own internal logistics. The strong recourse to outsourcing in Europe
and Japan sets a limitation to the development of the delivery services,
imposing a way of working which is standardized and homogeneous
among all market actors in a certain country. In order to be competitive
for what regards speed of the service, a more personalized model is
required, that is represent in the Asian continent by internal logistics
(mainly due to the lack of a widespread diffusion of the technology and
the infrastructures needed for the application of crowd-sourcing in
countries such as China and India), while in the United States it coincides
with crowd-sourcing.
Transportation means: few are the merchants openly declaring of
exploiting one or more particular kind of vehicles for the delivery service
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
139
provision. By concentrating on this limited amount of retailers, we can
observe as in almost all the European and Asian countries the employed
means are nothing very innovative: in fact we find vans, refrigerated vans
for the Grocery sector and airplanes in few cases of outsourced operators
having an air fleet for fast transportation over long distances. In France we
can see the rise of a couple of cases in which merchnats’ couriers have also
the bicycle as an alternative and this use of individual transportation
means such as bicycle, motorbike and car finds its biggest diffusion in the
United States, pushed by the development of crowd-sourcing models and
therefore to the recourse by independent couriers to their own owned
vehicles. This expresses again the limitation in services speed up in the
European countries, where almost no vehicles allowing to skip the city
traffic congestion are employed. The most innovative cases are
represented by drones in the US, that eliminate the need of a courier and
the condition of traffic, and electric bicycles in China, with a particular
interest to eco-friendly ways, but much has to be still done in this
direction.
Last-mile alternatives: the most diffused alternative to traditional home
delivery is represent by Click & Collect solutions, in which orders are
issued online and then personally collected by customers in the physical
stores (meaning that we are referring to traditional multichannel
retailers); it is spread in all the examined countries, but it often involves
not very fast timings, going beyond the next day availability if orders are
not already present in the store at the moment of order submission, while
they are usually offered in faster timings in the Asian countries. Some
merchants offer also other points for collection of ordered items, which
usually are collection points owned by the outsourced logistics operators
employed in the delivery services or convenience stores such as petrol
stations, little shops, etc; this mainly happens for those Dot Com player
not owning a network of physical stores for collection and mainly in
European countries. Another alternative is represented by the parcel
locker, which constitutes a big advantage as it doesn’t require that courier
and customer find each other at the same time in the delivery location,
but allows order delivery and pickup to occur in different moments,
increasing delivery efficiency; however this alternative is present in just
one British merchant. The issue of unattended home deliveries is therefore
not enough tackled among actual web retailers and a lack of really fast
alternatives (such as fast pickup in store or parcel lockers or other even
more innovative methods) can be reported in every country; this
represents a strong limitation, especially in those countries which present
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
140
the highest degree of development (i.e. United States which have no other
alternative excepted for Click & Collect in long times).
Real-time tracking: the tracking of the order in all its steps along the
delivery journey is instead an option offered by many players in every
country.
Date/time window choice: the arrangement of an appointment or, even
better, the choice of a specific time window for delivery reception is not a
much diffused option in most countries, especially in the United States (in
which only few cases of time slot choice are available) and the European
countries other than United Kingdom, in which the majority of merchants
allows to arrange an appointment date. In the Asian countries instead, or
at least in China and Japan, the majority of retailers offers not only the
opportunity of choosing a date, but also of selecting a very specific time
slot (lasting two hours in the better case and more or less four in the
worst) for delivery, being so sure of not missing the moment of order
arrival. This again represents a lack of service improvement for what
concerns delivery failure in those countries which are expected to perform
the best services.
Pre-delivery contacts: even if not so copious, there is a sufficient number
of merchants establishing a contact with customers before the delivery
takes place, always with the general objective of increasing service
efficiency and satisfaction and reducing failure; mainly these contacts
consist of a text or an e-mail for sending notifications in the moment of
order confirmation or beginning of shipment/delivery process; in few
cases instead the courier calls the customer in order to arrange all the
details before the process starts, while in some other cases (which
correspond to the employment of crowd-sourcing models) a lot of
information about the courier are made available to the customer,
including his/her name, picture and phone number. These cases are the
most interesting ones as they actually establish a real contact and they
mainly occur in the United States. For the other countries instead more
standard notifications are sent.
4.2 Second empirical analysis: double-variable classifications
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
141
In order to perform a deeper analysis and classification of the overall 112
merchants selected from the top national rankings by sales’ volumes and
constituting an object of interest for deep study as they carry out logistics
services for final home delivery to customers that take not more than the next
day with respect to order submission to be finalized, a second empirical analysis
has been executed, in which not only one single variable of the database is
described alone, but two variables are crossed in order to get additional insights
on these initiatives.
The commodity sector has been fixed as one of the two variables considered
in all the crossings, in order to highlight particular differences among industries
in the same geography and also to observe how similarly or differently the
retailers belonging to the same business sector could behave depending on other
context features. Then according to what has been driven out from previous
classifications, four are the crossings that have been made as expectations of
getting additional insights from those were particularly high:
A) Commodity sector versus merchants’ business nature (Dot Com pure
player or traditional multichannel retailer);
B) Commodity sector versus geographic coverage (national or local);
C) Commodity sector versus type of logistics provider (internal, crowd-
sourcing or outsourcing);
D) Commodity sector versus peculiarity of utilized transportation
means.
Each of these categorizations has been made in a first moment on a global
scale and then has been split according to the same geographic clusters that has
been considered for the previous classifications as they have showed to be pretty
much comparable one with the other in terms of internal homogeneity and
amount of relevant initiatives found (i.e. United States, United Kingdom, rest of
European countries including France, Germany, Italy and Spain and Asian
continent grouping together China, India , Japan and South Korea).
An additional subdivision has also been applied because different timings of
delivery have been discovered to present much diverse features; therefore, this
second more focused analysis has been carried out by considering next day
merchants alone as well as same day deliveries’ providers alone and then another
distinct attention has been paid to the group of merchants providing fast
services, which can be globally addressed to as the ones taking less than six hours
in order to be completed.
4.2.1 Commodity sector – merchants’ business nature
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
142
4.2.1.1 Next Day
Global
Commodity sector Dot Com pure
player Traditional
multichannel Total
Clothing 9 10 19
Cosmetics & Perfumery
2 2
General 1 8 9
Grocery
2 2 Informatics & general electronics 3 8 11
Others
6 6
Publishing
1 1
Total 13 37 50 Table 159 - sector vs. channel next day global
Starting from the slowest cases among the ones under focus (the merchants
offering next day delivery services, which are also the most copious cluster), we
can observe how the presence of Dot Com pure players is particularly relevant in
the Clothing industry (accounting for almost a half of its actors). Informatics &
general electronics sector too reports the presence of some Dot Com players
(corresponding to its 27 percent), while for all the other industries actually no
online pure players are present (with the exception of the one single case in the
General industry). This trend may be explained by the fact that Clothing and
Informatics sectors are the ones having experienced up to now the highest
development in the online channel with respect to others, therefore for newly
entrants companies the strategy of selecting that channel only could bring to
lower market risks in terms of sales’ potential with respect to all the other
sectors.
Let’s then give a more specific view to each geographical zone separately.
US
Commodity sector Traditional Total
Clothing 3 3
Cosmetics & Perfumery 2 2
Grocery 1 1
Informatics & general electronics 1 1
Others 3 3
Total 10 10 Table 160 - sector vs. channel next day US
Focusing on the US situation only, we can see that no retailers offering next
day delivery services to their customers are Dot Com pure players. This
phenomenon could be due to the fact that US pure online players represent the
best practices worldwide in terms of service level and therefore they are all able
of providing faster and more personalized services; while next day merchants are
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
143
all traditional actors that have just added the online channel to its business but
they do not consider it as their core business and so their strategy of web service
improvement is not so pushed. We can also observe as this happens in all the
commodity sectors interested by next day deliveries, first among the others
Clothing sector, followed by the group of Other minor industries and then by
Cosmetics & Perfumery, with a smaller presence of Informatics and Grocery.
Clothing sector is so the one experiencing the most of next day services, meaning
that it is the one for which the provision of faster options may represent a lower
perceived added value in the eyes of final consumers with respect to other
industries.
UK
Commodity sector Dot Com Traditional Total
Clothing 3 3 6
General
2 2 Informatics & general electronics 2 2 4
Others
2 2
Total 5 9 14 Table 161 - sector vs. channel next day UK
Differently from US situation, a relevant presence of Dot Com operators can
be found in the United Kingdom, in which they represent a 36 percent of the
overall cases. However the trend is exactly the one described for the general
overview, that is the presence of online specific actors only in the Clothing and
Informatics sectors (on top, accounting for a half of the overall cases in both
industries), while in no other sector merchants put in place the strategy of
focusing on the online channel only.
Other European countries (France, Germany, Italy and Spain)
Opposite situation for what concerns the other European countries: Dot Com
pure strategy remains very little diffused among merchants operating in the next
day delivery context, excepted for few sporadic cases in the industries accounting
for the biggest portion of initiatives, which are Clothing in the French context
and General sector for what concerns Germany.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
144
Table 162 - sector vs. channel next day Europe
Not much relevant are the Italian and Spanish situations, in which it could
seem to have a prevalence (in Italy) or at least a half presence (in Spain) of Dot
Com pure players, but the number of overall next day initiatives is so limited that
it is difficult to drive out generally valid conclusions from this analysis. What
could be instead surely noticed is that also in these two countries Dot Com
merchants operate in the Clothing sector, which is also the only industry whose
actors offer next day delivery services.
Asian countries (China, India, Japan and South Korea)
Country Commodity sector Dot Com Traditional Total
China Informatics & general electronics
1 1
China Total 1 1
India Others
1 1
India Total 1 1
Japan Clothing
1 1
General
1 1
Informatics & general electronics 1 2 3
Japan Total 1 4 5
South Korea Clothing 2
2
South Korea Total 2 2
Total 3 6 9 Table 163 - sector vs. channel next day Asia
Country Commodity sector Dot Com Traditional Total
France Clothing 2 1 3
General
2 2
Grocery
1 1
Informatics & general electronics
1 1
Publishing
1 1
France Total 2 6 8
Germany Clothing
1 1
General 1 3 4
Informatics & general electronics
1 1
Germany Total 1 5 6
Italy Clothing 1
1
Italy Total 1 1
Spain Clothing 1 1 2
Spain Total 1 1 2
Total 5 12 17
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
145
The Asian situation is almost similar to the one of most European countries
and US, with a predominance of traditional multichannel merchants for the next
day initiatives. Indeed, no Dot Com players can be found in the Chinese and
Indian countries, while one only case is present in Japan and it belongs to the
quite well developed Informatics sector. Interesting to notice how instead South
Korea distinguishes itself from its Asian neighbors by having Dot Com pure
players only in the next day context, both belonging to the Clothing industry; this
phenomenon could be explained by the relatively more recent development of
the online market; Dot Com actors are experiencing therefore a degree of
innovation which is a bit back warded with respect to other countries and so up
to now they are not able to manage services faster than next day.
4.2.1.2 Same day
Global
Commodity sector Dot Com Traditional Total
Clothing 1 11 12
Cosmetics & Perfumery
1 1
General 2 5 7
Grocery 2 5 7
Informatics & general electronics 4 10 14
Others 2 5 7
Publishing 1 2 3
Total 12 39 51 Table 164 - sector vs. channel same day global
For merchants arranging same day deliveries the overall percentage of Dot
Com and traditional players is similar to the one of next day operators (24
percent of Dot Com and 76 percent of traditional). However differently from
what has been found in the next day environment, the commodity sectors
comprehending the highest amount of initiatives is Informatics & general
electronics (one third of the total Dot Com). In addition, much more numerous
are the sectors in which at least one Dot Com pure player is present, including
not only Clothing but also less developed industries in relation to the online
channel such as General, Grocery, Publishing and Others which include
Furniture and Flowers). We can therefore conclude that more industries are
interested by the presence of merchants specialized in the online channel and
offering services occurring within one day.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
146
US
Commodity sector Dot Com Traditional Total
Clothing
6 6
Grocery 1 2 3
Informatics & general electronics
1 1
Others 2 3 5
Publishing
1 1
Total 3 13 16 Table 165 - sector vs. channel same day US
The number of same day Dot Com cases is not very relevant in the United
States (just the 18 percent). But it’s interesting to notice the fact that the only
industries with few pure online initiatives are not the ones more developed in
general: in fact, Clothing and Informatics report no merchants at all, while we
can observe players in Grocery and Other sectors (which consist in detail of
Home & Furniture and Flowers).
UK
Commodity sector Traditional Total
General 2 2
Grocery 1 1
Informatics & general electronics 2 2
Others 1 1
Total 6 6 Table 166 - sector vs. channel same day UK
Dot Com players have an even less relevant presence in the UK same day
context with respect to the next day one, rather they are absent at all; United
Kingdom continue to present a really scarce amount of online pure players. An
interesting observation regards the fact that in general in the same day context of
this country more traditionally developed industries, especially Clothing,
completely lose their relevance.
Other European countries (France, Germany, Italy and Spain)
Also same day context in the other European countries reports a prevalence of
traditional multichannel retailers, excepted for a couple of cases in France and
Italy belonging to the Informatics sector.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
147
Country Commodity sector Dot Com Traditional Total
France Clothing
2 2
Informatics & general electronics 1
1
France Total 1 2 3
Germany Cosmetics & Perfumery
1 1
Informatics & general electronics
1 1
Germany Total 2 2
Italy General
1 1
Informatics & general electronics 1
1
Italy Total 1 1 2
Spain Clothing
1 1
Publishing
1 1
Spain Total 2 2
Total 2 7 9 Table 167 - sector vs. channel same day Europe
Asian countries (China, India, Japan and South Korea)
Country Commodity sector Dot Com Traditional Total
China Grocery 1
1
Informatics & general electronics 1 1 2
China Total 2 1 3
India Clothing 1
1
General 2 1 3
Informatics & general electronics 1
1
Others
1 1
India Total 4 2 6
Japan Clothing
2 2
General
1 1
Informatics & general electronics
5 5
Japan Total 8 8
South Korea Grocery
2 2
Publishing 1
1
South Korea Total 1 2 3
Total 7 13 20 Table 168 - sector vs. channel same day Asia
Significantly higher amount of Dot Com players in the Asian geography for
what concerns same day options. The most interesting countries in this sense are
China and India, reporting a 67 percent of initiatives each; some of the populated
industries are the generally more developed Clothing and especially Informatics,
but there are also some relevant cases in Grocery and mainly General sectors.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
148
Evidently being countries of more recent development and spread in the online
market, it has been easier to born as Dot Com players instead of moving from a
more traditional to an online specialized business. Japan instead had a sooner
development of the web channel, more resembling the European context and this
is reflected in the table, in which we can observe that every retailer operating in
the online market has also a traditional channel of physical stores. South Korea
sees too a majority of traditional merchants and in general presents cases of same
day initiatives only in a very unusual sector, which is Publishing, showing a
certain backwardness in this sense with respect to its Asian neighbors.
4.2.1.3 Less than six hours
Global
Commodity sector Dot Com Traditional Total
General 1 1 2
Grocery
2 2
Informatics & general electronics 1 5 6
Others 1
1
Total 3 8 11 Table 169 - sector vs. channel <6h global
Also in this fastest context of deliveries made in very short timings (only few
hours), we can observe a prevalence of traditional merchants. Players operating
this kind of services are mainly companies belonging to the Informatics & general
electronics industry (with one only case of Dot Com retailer), together with
Grocery sector (that however remains a sector typically multichannel), General
(few cases, but there is a presence of both pure Dot Com and multichannel
merchants) and one pure online player in another minor industry. Very
interesting to notice that the strongly online developed Clothing industry is
completely excluded from this cluster of services, meaning that it doesn’t
represent a sector in which few hours deliveries constitute a real value added for
customers, because otherwise (especially in some countries as US and UK)
companies could have invested in putting in place such kind of services.
US
Commodity sector Dot Com Traditional Total
General 1
1
Informatics & general electronics
1 1
Total 1 1 2 Table 170 - sector vs. channel <6h US
The two fast cases in the United States are perfectly equilibrated, one Dot
Com player belonging to the General sector, the other operating in the
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
149
Informatics industry but a traditional merchant working in more market
channels.
European countries (UK included)
Country Commodity sector Traditional Total
France Grocery 1 1
Informatics & general electronics 1 1
France Total 2 2
Germany Informatics & general electronics 1 1
Germany Total 1 1
Spain General 1 1
Spain Total 1 1
UK Grocery 1 1
UK Total 1 1
Total 5 5 Table 171 - sector vs. channel <6h Europe
For European countries (with the exception of Italy that doesn’t even present
cases of merchants performing fast deliveries) there are only companies initially
born as traditional and then expanded in the eCommerce business. Interesting to
notice as Informatics & general electronics plays a role in this context, again
together with Grocery and General.
Asian countries
Country Commodity sector Dot Com Traditional Total
China Informatics & general electronics 1
1
China Total 1 1
India Informatics & general electronics
2 2
India Total 2 2
Japan Others 1
1
Japan Total 1 1
Total 2 2 4 Table 172 - sector vs. channel <6h Asia
Also in the Asian continent there is a country (i.e. South Korea) not
presenting any initiative of this kind of speed. In addition, India accounts only
traditional multichannel players. However, China and Japan represent a different
case of interest because the only operator they have able to serve its customers in
such limited times is also a pure Dot Com player; it deals only with companies
which are actually born to offer such fast options in a very specific channel that is
the eCommerce.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
150
4.2.2 Commodity sector – geographical coverage
4.2.2.1 Next day
Global
Commodity sector Local Coverage National Coverage Total
Clothing 3 16 19
Cosmetics & Perfumery
2 2
General
9 9
Grocery
2 2
Informatics & general electronics
11 11
Others
6 6
Publishing
1 1
Total 3 47 50 Table 173 - sector vs. coverage next day global
For what concerns next day deliveries, the very biggest majority of merchants is
able to cover with its service the whole national territory. Only three are the cases
of retailers not able to go beyond a local coverage and they all belong to the
Clothing industry: the Japanese Point operates its service only in some selected
cities (Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, Ibaraki, Gunma, Tochigi, Yamanashi),
reaching however a certain coverage (even if not national); on the contrary, the
American Victoria’s Secret and the English Marks & Spencer can deliver products
on the next day of order submission just in few selected postcodes, covering
shorter distances.
The geographical split is irrelevant due to the homogeneity of this national
coverage trend almost worldwide.
4.2.2.2 Same day
Global
Commodity sector Local Coverage National Coverage Total
Clothing 12
12
Cosmetics & Perfumery 1
1
General 4 3 7
Grocery 6 1 7
Informatics & general electronics 8 6 14
Others 5 2 7
Publishing 3
3
Total 39 12 51 Table 174 - sector vs. coverage same day global
We can observe a definitely opposite direction moving to same day deliveries:
indeed, the 76 percent of merchants is not able to offer its services if in a limited
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
151
zone. The sectors in which the higher number of retailers is able to work at a
national level are Informatics and General, with few cases in Grocery (particularly
interesting due to the high degree of perishability of products involved in the
delivery process) and Other sectors (which are Home & Furniture and Flowers).
On the opposite case coverage is exclusively local for all the other sectors, in
particular Clothing (100 percent of merchants) and Grocery (6 cases out of 7).
US
Commodity sector Local Coverage National Coverage Total
Clothing 6
6
Grocery 3
3
Informatics & general electronics 1
1
Others 4 1 5
Publishing 1
1
Total 15 1 16 Table 175 - sector vs. coverage same day US
In the United States, considered the huge dimension of the overall national
territory, the only operator able to offer same day delivery in the whole country is
1-88-Flowers.com Inc., which exploits Deliv service provides and its densely
populated network of independent couriers found through a crowd-sourcing
model. In the Clothing industry (corresponding to the 38 percent) the biggest
part of same day retailers relies on external logistics providers (first of all Deliv
and Uber Rush) and of their crowd-sourcing networks, but they are not able to go
beyond the boundaries of local coverage; some can serve different cities (e.g. Foot
Locker together with Deliv serves Glendale, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose
and Santa Clara; Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom instead resort on Uber Rush for
deliveries in Chicago, New York and San Francisco the first, while in Seattle and
Chicago the latter), while others can reach within the very same day of order
submission only few New York postcodes (e.g. Gilt and Saks). Also in the Grocery
sector (accounting for a 19 percent of the overall same day merchants) coverage is
local, especially due to the fact that logistics in most cases is internally owned
and managed (with the exception of Target which serves Boston and Minneapolis
by resorting to the outsourced logistics provider Dynamex) and that carried items
need to be kept in very controlled transport condition in order not to break the
temperature chain.
UK
Commodity sector Local Coverage National Coverage Total
General 1 1 2
Grocery
1 1
Informatics & general electronics 1 1 2
Others
1 1
Total 2 4 6
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
152
Table 176 - sector vs. coverage same day UK
The situation is opposite in the United Kingdom (which however has of
course a much more limited territory): in fact, two thirds of the retailers are able
to cover the whole country with their same day delivery options. Additionally
three out of these four merchants (Argos, Tesco and Farnell) can offer this service
with their own internal logistics, while just one resorts to outsourced couriers for
the delivery option. The ones instead able only to serve few selected postcodes
(i.e. the general merchant Next and the Informatics company Currys) leaves
distribution activities in the hands of external providers. The setup and the
management of an internal logistics channel surely constitutes an economic
effort and a market risk, but it could allow to offer a more homogeneous and
controlled service within higher distances.
Other European countries
Country Commodity sector Local Coverage National Coverage Total
France Clothing 2
2
Informatics & general electronics 1
1
France Totale 3 3
Germany Cosmetics & Perfumery 1
1
Informatics & general electronics 1
1
Germany Totale 2 2
Italy General
1 1
Informatics & general electronics 1
1
Italy Totale 1 1 2
Spain Clothing 1
1
Publishing 1
1
Spain Totale 2 2
Total 8 1 9 Table 177 - sector vs. channel same day Europe
In the other European countries almost no merchants are able to offer a
national same day service, excepted for one Italian case (D-Mail which operated
in the General sector and offers same day delivery option in Italy overall in
partnership with the express courier BRT). All these services however resort to
outsourced logistics provider and can serve one city only (and its adjacent zones
of course): Milan for Italy (ePrice together with TNT courier); Paris for France (Le
Bon Marchè and Brand Alley) or at most Lyon (C-Discount in partnership with
Colissimo and Chronopost); Barcelona (for Massimo Dutti) or Madrid (for
Casadellibro) in the Spanish country. Different is the service in Germany, in
which it is more spread even if not reaching the national coverage (Berlin,
Hamburg, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Hannover and Ruhr area for Notebooksbilliger
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
153
served by NBB Courier; many spread postcodes for Douglas retailer served by
DHL).
Asian countries
Country Commodity sector Local Coverage National Coverage Total
China Grocery 1
1
Informatics & general electronics
2 2
China Totale 1 2 3
India Clothing 1
1
General 3
3
Informatics & general electronics 1
1
Others 1
1
India Totale 6 6
Japan Clothing 2
2
General
1 1
Informatics & general electronics 2 3 5
Japan Totale 4 4 8
South Korea Grocery 2
2
Publishing 1
1
South Korea Totale 3 3
Total 14 6 20 Table 178 - sector vs. coverage same day Asia
Interesting to notice, differently from previous geographies, that in China and
Japan instead the majority or at least one half of same day merchants is able to
cover the whole country with its delivery service. In both countries the sector
with largest coverage is Informatics, with one only case also of Japanese retailer
belonging to the General sector. Among the two Chinese cases, one exploits an
external courier for performing the delivery (Dangdang), while the other uses an
internal logistics (Gome Electrical Appliance). Japanese merchants instead for the
large majority have left the management of logistics activities to outsourced
operators, excepted for one merchant having kept it internally and being anyway
able to cover the whole country (Dospara); the other cases of national coverage
report the exploitation of one preferential courier company (Sagawa Express) and
the recourse to air transportation. India instead has no cases of same day retailers
with national coverage (even if many of them are able to serve a big amount of
cities, e.g. 116 cities served by Firstcry, a ten by Myntra and Flipkart); similarly
South Korean company operating in the Publishing industry covers a big number
of cities, while the two grocers just two or at most three cities.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
154
4.2.2.3 Less than 6 hours
Global
Commodity sector Local Coverage Total
General 2 2
Grocery 2 2
Informatics & general electronics 6 6
Others 1 1
Total 11 11 Table 179 - sector vs. coverage <6h global
For what regards services faster than same day, no merchant in no country is
able to offer a spread geographic coverage. In some cases the served cities can be
numerous (28 US cities for Amazon Prime Now, 8 French cities for Darty, 20
German cities for Conrad merchant, 39 Spanish cities for El Corte Inglès, 6
Chinese cities for Jingdong and many Indian ones for The Mobile Store); two of
these retailers operate in the general sector, but most of them belong to
Informatics. In the other cases instead the service regards one only city or even
just few districts (San Francisco or New York for Apple, Paris for Carrefour,
London for Sainsbury, Chennai for Univercell and Tokyo for Rakuten); three
cases again belong to Informatics industry, while two to Grocery.
4.2.3 Commodity sector – type of logistics service
4.2.3.1 Next day
Global
Commodity sector Internal Outsourcing Total
Clothing
19 19
Cosmetics & Perfumery
2 2
General 1 8 9
Grocery 1 1 2
Informatics & general electronics 1 10 11
Others 2 4 6
Publishing
1 1
Total 5 45 50 Table 180 - sector vs. logistics next day global
Next day options in the large majority of cases are carried out by professional
logistics operators, able to perform final delivery for a big variety of different
merchants without particular specialization in the services. Few are the cases of
internal logistics appositely developed for this kind of services and they mostly
belong to industries less traditionally developed in the online channel: excepted
for the few cases in the general and informatics sectors, we can find one out of
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
155
the two grocery merchants and other minor industries corresponding in
particular to Eyewear and Office supplies.
US
Commodity sector Internal Outsourcing Total
Clothing
3 3
Cosmetics & Perfumery
2 2
Grocery 1
1
Informatics & general electronics
1 1
Others 1 2 3
Total 2 8 10 Table 181 - sector vs. logistics next day US
In the US 80 percent of cases relies on outsourcing and in many of them no
preferential courier is indicated; in other cases instead we can find FedEx (for
HP), UPS (for J Crew) and USPS (for light products distributed by Musicians’
friend). The merchant having an internal logistics instead are one selling Office
supplies (Office Depot) and the other in the Grocery sector (Peapod). All the
cases are also traditional multichannel merchants.
European countries (UK included)
Country Commodity sector Internal Outsourcing Total
France Clothing
3 3
General
2 2
Grocery
1 1
Informatics & general electronics
1 1
Publishing
1 1
France Totale 8 8
Germany Clothing
1 1
General 1 3 4
Informatics & general electronics
1 1
Germany Totale 1 5 6
Italy Clothing
1 1
Italy Totale 1 1
Spain Clothing
2 2
Spain Totale 2 2
UK Clothing
6 6
General
2 2
Informatics & general electronics 1 3 4
Others
2 2
UK Totale 1 13 14
Total 2 29 31 Table 182 - sector vs. logistics next day Europe
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
156
Also European countries have a big portion of next day merchants relying on
outsourced logistics providers for deliveries, excepted for two cases: the first is
the UK informatics retailer and Dot Com player Misco; the other is the German
Otto Group having setup an internally own logistics spin-off, the sub-company
Hermes, for performing deliveries for itself and also for offering logistics services
to other retailers (e.g. Baur Versand); it is not only the unique German retailer
having specialized its logistics service, but also the only one pure online player.
While most of British companies resorting to outsourcing do not rely on a
preferred operator (10 out of 13, with the exceptions of Clothing companies Marks
& Spencer and The Hut Group and the Informatics Carphone Warehouse, all
resorting to DPD), in France and Germany many retailers exploit a preferred
outsourced operator: in Germany we can find Deutsche Post (for Clothing retailer
Klingel), DHL (for informatics Cyberport) and DPD (for general merchants
Printus and Schneider); in France FedEx Express (for general Rue du Commerce),
TNT (for the again general Oxybull) and mostly Chronopost (four merchants in
very different sectors such as grocer Auchan, Clothing companies
Showrommprivè and Sarenza until informatics LDLC). Italy and Spain do not
present significant cases (just one Italian and two Spanish, both resorting to
outsourcing).
Asian countries
Country Commodity sector Internal Outsourcing Total
China Informatics & general electronics
1 1
China Totale 1 1
India Others 1
1
India Totale 1 1
Japan Clothing
1 1
General
1 1
Informatics & general electronics
3 3
Japan Totale 5 5
South Korea Clothing
2 2
South Korea Totale 2 2
Total 1 8 9 Table 183 - sector vs. logistics next day Asia
In India we can find one case of merchant with internal logistics
infrastructure for expanding its business to the online channel (it is the Eyewear
company Lenskart). On contrary, in the other countries we can observe only
outsourcing practice: in South Korea there are two Dot Com clothing retailers
(Gaenso and Minsshop) exploiting different couriers; in Japan 4 out of 5 cases are
multichannel companies not having a preferred operator (excepted for clothing
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
157
Point choosing preferably Yamato as its courier), while the only Dot Com
merchant is the informatics NTT-X which partners with Sagawa Express; in China
no particular cases can be highlighted.
4.2.3.2 Same day
Global
Commodity sector Crowd-sourcing Internal Outsourcing Total
Clothing 5 1 6 12
Cosmetics & Perfumery
1 1
General
1 6 7
Grocery
6 1 7
Informatics & general electronics 1 4 9 14
Others 4 1 2 7
Publishing
3 3
Total 10 13 28 51 Table 184 - sector vs. logistics same day global
Moving to same day options, the situation changes significantly: indeed, the
percentage of merchants having developed their internal logistics increases a lot
(corresponding to 25 percent) and a good percentage appears (20 percent)
presenting the recourse to crowd-sourcing. The commodity sectors in which we
can find the highest development of internal logistics are Informatics & general
electronics (in the case in which the merchant would like to personalize in a
particular way the delivery service) and especially Grocery (industry in which the
peculiarity of transported items implies the advantage of developing a personal
fleet of refrigerated vans). Crowd-sourcing instead, excepted for some disparate
cases in some sectors, finds large use in the Clothing sector, probably thanks to
the particularly low complexity of the items to be transported and to the
advanced degree of presence in the online market of this industry, fact that
guarantees a widespread diffusion and therefore a certain easiness in “recruiting”
independent individuals for delivery provision.
US
Commodity sector Crowd-sourcing Internal Outsourcing Total
Clothing 5
1 6
Grocery
2 1 3
Informatics & general electronics 1
1
Others 4 1
5
Publishing
1 1
Total 10 3 3 16 Table 185 - sector vs. logistics same day US
In the United States the most largely employed modality is crowd-sourcing: 10
out of 16 merchants in fact rely on a network of independent couriers for
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
158
performing final deliveries. Most of them (6 out of 10) manages the network
through the Deliv app (whose couriers travel in their own car); in the other 4
cases we can find retailer resorting to couriers by bicycle, mostly through Uber
Rush (for the three clothing merchants) and Etsy ASAP (for the retailer operating
in Other sectors, in particular Home & Furniture). The three players having
instead an internal logistics belong mainly to Grocery sector (Amazon Fresh
and Walmart) and one case of Office supplies. The three left cases resorting to
outsourcing are one grocer (Target that exploits the preferred courier Dynamex),
the publishing Barnes&Nobles (resorting to Google Express for same day
deliveries) and clothing Saks (without preferred courier).
European countries (UK included) Table 186 - sector vs. logistics same day Europe
In the UK crowd-sourcing category disappears, but the one of internal
logistics has a relevant presence (a 50 percent of the overall cases): the merchants
with internal logistics belong always to Grocery sector (Tesco), but also General
(Argos) and Informatics (Farnell). The other cases of outsourcing present
different sectors but do not report any preferred courier. In the rest of European
countries instead there are only outsourcing cases. In Spain both cases (in
Clothing and Publishing sectors) do not have any preferred courier. In France the
two clothing cases do not resort to a preferred operator, while for Informatics
sector the preferential courier is Colissimo or Chronopost. In Germany each
Country Commodity sector Internal Outsourcing Total
France Clothing
2 2
Informatics & general electronics
1 1
France Totale 3 3
Germany Cosmetics & Perfumery
1 1
Informatics & general electronics
1 1
Germany Totale 2 2
Italy General
1 1
Informatics & general electronics
1 1
Italy Totale 2 2
Spain Clothing
1 1
Publishing
1 1
Spain Totale 2 2
UK General 1 1 2
Grocery 1
1
Informatics & general electronics 1 1 2
Others
1 1
UK Totale 3 3 6
Total 3 12 15
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
159
merchant has its own partnered courier: NBB Courier for Notebooksbilliger
(informatics), DHL for Douglas (Perfumery); the same thing happens in Italy
with TNT serving the informatics Dot Com ePrice and BRT for general D-Mail.
Asian countries
Country Commodity sector Internal Outsourcing Total
China Grocery 1
1
Informatics & general electronics 1 1 2
China Totale 2 1 3
India Clothing 1
1
General
3 3
Informatics & general electronics 1
1
Others
1 1
India Totale 2 4 6
Japan Clothing
2 2
General
1 1
Informatics & general electronics 1 4 5
Japan Totale 1 7 8
South Korea Grocery 2
2
Publishing
1 1
South Korea Totale 2 1 3
Total 7 13 20 Table 187 - sector vs. logistics same day Asia
Also in Asian countries crowd-sourcing is not employed anymore, but the
recourse to internal logistics is more relevant than in European countries. In
China the internal infrastructure has been developed not only for Grocery sector
(Tmall owned by Alibaba with its own logistics branch Cainiao), but also for
Informatics (Gome Electrical Appliance); the third same day merchant however
resorts to outsourcing without having a preferred courier (the informatics
Dangdang). In India two are the cases of internal logistics, one in Clothing
(Myntra) and the other in Informatics (Flipkart with its internal logistics branch
Ekart); the remaining four cases resorting to outsourcing belong to the less
developed sectors for what regards eCommerce of General and Baby Care
products, without the indication of a preferential logistics operator except for the
case of Firstcry (courier XpressBees). In South Korea two out of three cases
belong to Grocery and have an internal logistics (Lotte Mart and E-Mart), while
the third relies on a preferentially outsourced provider (Yes24 resorting to GTX).
Instead in Japan just one retailer exploits its own logistics and it belongs to the
Informatics sector (Dospara), while all the other cases utilize outsourcing with a
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
160
prevalence of preferred courier’s specification (Yamato or Fast Retailing for
Clothing companies, Sagawa Express for General and Informatics industries).
4.2.3.3 Less than six hours
Global
Commodity sector Crowd-sourcing Internal Outsourcing Total
General
2
2
Grocery
1 1 2 Informatics & general electronics 2 4
6
Others
1
1
Total 2 8 1 11 Table 188 - sector vs. logistics <6h global
In the context of fast services, the presence of outsourced couriers is almost
null, with a large majority of cases of internal logistics and a few merchants
resorting to crowd-sourcing models. The merchants belonging to Grocery and
providing so fast services are really few and they at most present the internal
logistics’ alternative to outsourcing. For the General sector instead there are only
cases of internal logistics, while for the Informatics not only internal but also
crowd-sourcing (despite the peculiarity of products to move, which can be
particularly voluminous and heavy). In the US the internal logistics is employed
in the General sector (Amazon Prime Now and Air), while crowd-sourcing can be
found in the Informatics sector (Apple with couriers riding bikes in San Francisco
and New York). In the UK there is one only case in Grocery with internal logistics
(Sainsbuty with the Chop Chop network of couriers by bike). In the rest of
Europe there are two cases of internal logistics (the German informatics Conrad
with its branch Tiramizoo and the Spanish El Corte Inglès in the General sector);
while in France we can find one outsourcing (LaPoste serving Carrefour grocer
with couriers riding a bike in Paris) and one crowd-sourcing case (the informatics
Darty exploiting Colisweb network). In Asian countries instead we can only find
internal logistics because crowd-sourcing has seen no development up to now;
we only have few merchants operating in the Informatics industry which have
developed their own infrastructure to expand their traditional business into
eCommerce (the Indian Univercell and The Mobile Store) or to start activities as
pure online players (the Japanese Rakuten and the Chinese Jingdong).
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
161
4.2.4 Commodity sector – used transportation means
4.2.4.1 Next day
Global
Commodity sector Plane Van Refrigerated van Total
Clothing
3
3
General
2
2
Grocery
1 1
Informatics & general electronics 2 1
3
Others
1
1
Total 2 7 1 10 Table 189 - sector vs. vehicles next day global
For what regards next day, few are the cases of merchants declaring of
resorting to a particular type of transportation means for performing deliveries.
Regarding Grocery sector, the need is the one of having a fleet of refrigerated
vans (due to the perishability of products). In some cases (7 out of 51) merchants
state that they use vans and these are the mostly web developed sectors:
Clothing, Informatics and General. In a couple of cases however the mean used
for delivery is the plane: they are cases in the Informatics sector, in which the
high value density of moved products (i.e. products that may have a small size
but have a high cost) justifies the recourse to such an expensive transportation
modality. In the US one only merchant declares of exploiting vans uniquely and it
relates to Office Depot, a merchant which have expanded from traditional to
online channel and have decided to invest in its own delivery fleet. There is one
only other case of merchant with internal logistics (the grocer Peapod) and it
doesn’t state anything about the vehicles used, but according to the nature of its
business probably it may employ temperature-controlled vehicles. In the UK
some more cases of merchants choosing one preferential business exist: 5 out of
14 declare of utilizing only vans for delivery and they always refer to the more
web advanced sectors; all these cases exploit outsourced couriers and ask them to
use vans exclusively; in three cases it is the same courier (DPD) which only uses
vans. In France there is one only case out of 8 and it is the grocer Auchan
exploiting refrigerated vans. In Germany we can find two more cases: they deal
with Hermes courier, put in place by pure Dot Com player Otto Group in the
moment of development of the online business and become a real logistics
operator to which other merchants could resort (like for instance Baur Versand);
this courier has a fleet of vans for its deliveries. No cases instead in Italy and
Spain. Lastly, for what concerns Asian countries, Japan only presents two cases of
merchants resorting exclusively to air transportation: both of them belong to the
Informatics sector and rely on the same outsourced courier Sagawa.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
162
4.2.4.2 Same day
Global
Commodity sector Airplane Car Bike Van Refrigerated
van Bike/
motorbike Total
Clothing
2 1
2 5
General 1
1
2
Grocery
6
6 Informatics & general electronics 2 1
1
4
Others
3
1
1 5
Publishing
1
1
Total 3 7 1 3 6 3 23 Table 190 - sector vs. vehicles same day global
Moving to same day deliveries, merchants declaring of resorting to one or
more specific vehicles increase notably. Again here we can find the recourse to
fleets of refrigerated vans in the Grocery sector (two cases in US, one in the UK,
one in China and two in South Korea) and of traditional vans in more generic
General, Informatics and Office supplies sectors (one in US, one in UK and one in
Japan). There are also three cases of recourse to air transport and as before
especially for the Informatics sector (one in the United Kingdom and one in
Japan). In addition to next day however, we can start to observe the use of more
“individual” vehicles: in some cases indeed bicycles and motorbikes are mostly
employed ( in the US and mainly for Clothing industries, together with a case in
the Others category belonging to Home & Furniture). Interesting also to notice
the case of exclusive utilization of the bicycle: it is still a US merchant operating
in the Clothing industry, in which moved items have no particular criticalities in
terms of size and weight. However the highest number (7 out of 51) is represented
by retailers doing exclusive use of the car: not only in Clothing, but also in
Informatics (for products of small dimensions) and other minor sectors as Drugs,
Flowers and Publishing; again the only country interested by these initiatives are
the United States. All the cases of exclusive utilization of cars and bicycles, which
come from US as already said, refer to merchants resorting to crowd-sourcing
models for the delivery: cars are the preferred vehicle by Deliv and Postmates,
while bicycles are mostly employed by Uber Rush independent couriers, having
however a more limited geographic coverage. Sectors are quite varied, with a
general presence of sectors with little sized products (excepted for one case in the
Informatics sector which involves only small items). Again crowd-sourcing is the
model of the three couriers freely choosing their own vehicle: we refer to
Clothing and Home & Furniture sectors and to Postmates and Uber Rush
operators. In Barnes&Nobles case instead (Publishing sector) logistics is
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
163
outsourced to Google Express, which provides its employee with car or van.
When involved items allow to do it, the recourse to vehicles allowing to easier
navigate in the urban traffic is pushed. In three cases of internal logistics instead
the mostly employed mean is the van: refrigerated for Amazon Fresh and
Walmart grocers, traditional for Office Depot (non-perishable products). Very
few are the US cases in which no transportation mean is specified and they are all
linked to logistics outsourcing. In the UK and in Asian countries (in the other
European countries no cases of specific means can be found), together with the
disappereance of the crowd-sourcing model, also the recourse to individual
vehicles disappears: indeed, in the UK we have just three cases of merchants
having internal logistics (one grocer using refrigerated vans, one general
merchant exploiting vans and one informatics employing the plane); in Japan one
case of vans’ use for the only internal logistics’ merchant (the informatics
Dospara) and two cases of retailers resorting to air transportation by outsourced
operator Sagawa Express; in China and South Korea three cases overall of grocers
having invested in their own fleet of temperature-controlled vans.
4.2.4.3 Less thansix hours
Global
Commodity sector Bike Drones Van Bike/motorbike Electric
bike Total
General
1
1
Grocery 2
2
Informatics & general electronics
1 2 1 4
Total 2 1 1 2 1 7 Table 191 - sector vs. vehicles <6h global
Moving to delivery options performed in few hours, merchants not specifying
any preferential transportation means are even less. Vans and motorbikes remain
in a limited number and exclusively linked to Informatics sector (which involves
the products with the highest volumes and therefore requiring bigger vehicles).
Interesting to notice instead the increasing interest towards the bicycle, not only
for small sized informatics items but especially in the Grocery sector for small
expenses which involve a limited amount of products. Additionally new vehicles
can be found, among which the electric bikes according to the recent trend of
environmental concern and drones in order to make deliveries even more
efficient and effective by eliminating the courier’s need. In the US we can find
two merchants: the general retailer Amazon using drones and being able to serve
28 cities in half an hour after having received the order; the informatics Apple
resorting to Postmated crowd-sourcing model, with couriers utilizing their own
bike or motorbike at their choice. In the UK instead we can find one of the two
cases of grocer delivering through bicycles and it is Sainsbury, that to expand its
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
164
business online has developed an internally controlled network of employed
couriers managed through an application called Chop Chop and delivering
ordered items by bicycle in London. The other grocer with bike delivery is the
French Carrefour, relying in outsourcing to LaPoste operator for deliveries in
Paris in one hour; still in France we can find the informatics Darty resorting to
crowd-sourcing operator Colisweb, which leaves couriers free to preferably
choose among bike and motorbike in 8 cities. In Germany instead van service for
the internal logistics of the informatics merchant Conrad. No cases in Italy and
Spain. In the end, for what concerns Asia, only China reports an interesting case:
it is the informatics retailer Jingdong, born as Dot Com player with its own
internal logistics of couriers which can use the traditional van or, as an
alternative, the electric bicycles for deliveries in six cities. Interesting to notice
how China addresses the topic of environmental sustainability proposing this
more “green” technology for delivery. The other merchants in India and Japan do
not specify any transportation means.
4.2.5 Conclusions ans insights from second empirical classifications
Moving then to double-variable classifications, we can get the following
insights:
Commodity sector versus business’ nature: summing up the analysis of the
commodity sector versus the business nature of merchants, we can state
that almost all the sectors are interested by online initiatives when next
day and same day delivery options are involved, while the number of
present industries reduces itself when moving to faster services and
especially Clothing industry disappears; knowing for how much time
Clothing companies have been operating online sales and how many of
them have gained a strong position in the market. This lack of fast services
mustn’t be a matter of backwardness of the sector with respect to others;
the most probable reason for this is that merchants have experienced the
fact that the effort for setting up this kind of options is not worth as it
won’t bring to a significant service improvement from customers’
perspective. In addition the most present sectors in the next day context
are only Clothing, Informatics & general electronics and General (in
decreasing order of amount of initiatives) and all the others have a
significant numerical distance; differently from this, for what regards same
day environment also Grocery sector gains a relevant position, tied with
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
165
General industry. Going into detail of pure Dot Com players, we can
observe that for next day options almost only Clothing and Informatics
have few Dot Com players, while in the same day context other sectors
come up (e.g. General, Grocery, Publishing and Others), to return in the
end to few industries in the fast cases but different from the next day
situation: indeed, while Informatics keeps its presence, Clothing is
replaced by General and Other minor sectors. United States account for
no Dot Com players in the next day environment and few in the other
faster contexts, but in not traditionally developed sectors (Grocery and
Others). Europe overall (including also United Kingdom) reports instead a
relevant number of Dot Com players operating next day services, few
performing same day and zero for fast options. Asia instead has pure
online players in all the time contexts, especially for what regards same
day options in India and linked to Informatics, General and Grocery
sectors. Therefore Dot Come players are more present in countries of
more recent development in the eCommerce (typically Asian ones) and,
excepted for Informatics which has a relevant presence, in industries of
recent online invasion (mostly General and Grocery).
Commodity sector versus geographic coverage: by increasing the speed of
the service, the distances covered shorten themselves. Clothing merchants
are the ones with a particularly local spread (i.e. they represent the only
next day local and most of same day local options). The other industries
have different developments according to the country: Grocery is quite
local worldwide, but has a larger national coverage in the United
Kingdom; Informatics instead is very much nationally developed in the
Asian countries (especially in China and Japan). Lastly, US situation is the
most critical one from a point of national coverage due to the vastness of
its territory.
Commodity sector versus logistics type: outsourcing is the most utilized
practice in the next day options (90 percent of cases), with few internal
logistics cases as only alternative; it loses relevance in the same day
context, leaving the ground to both internal and crowd-sourcing practices
and almost completely disappears in case of fast deliveries. For the next
day context, the sectors mostly interested by outsourcing practices are
Grocery in the US, while General and Informatics in the European
countries; moving instead to same day and fast deliveries, internal logistics
mainly regards Informatics sector and Grocery and especially UK and
Asian countries. Crowd-sourcing instead can be found almost exclusively
in the United States and specifically for Clothing sector.
Commodity sector versus transportation means: to conclude, we can
observe that the number of merchants specifying the type of
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
166
transportation means utilized increases by speeding up the service
timings. In addition, for next day options we can only find cases of use of
vans (mostly for Clothing, General and Informatics sectors and mainly in
the UK), refrigerated vans (for Grocery in France) and planes for
Informatics industry (in Japan). By decreasing the time available for the
service provision, increases the presence of more individual vehicles and
this is strongly related to the presence of crowd-sourcing logistics: in fact,
for what concerns next day, individual means (bicycles, motorbikes and
cars) are employed only in the US and by independent couriers “recruited”
via crowd-sourcing models, but still mostly for traditional industries such
as Clothing, Informatics and General. Coming to the fastest services, the
share of individual vehicles increases but it specifies in the Informatics
sector only; in the meantime, other innovative technologies are employed
in other less developed sectors (e.g. electric bikes in Grocery, drones in
General) while Clothing industry finds no place at all in this classification.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
167
5. Final conclusions
The previous research has been developed with the objective of filling the
gaps arisen from the literature review; for sake of clarity, the questions
representing the objective of the thesis were:
1) Which are the most relevant real examples of merchants operating in the
eCommerce at a worldwide level?
2) How many of these merchants carry out their e-fulfillment process not
going beyond the next day from order reception? And how many among
them offer even faster options?
3) Which commonalities and/or differences exist among initiatives belonging
to different geographical areas?
4) Which commodity sectors are interested by this kind of initiatives? Are
there any commonalities and/or differences in the initiatives’ feature
among the industries?
5) What are the latest trends about the main features of logistics activities
and about the technologies employed for the provision of this kind of
services?
The collection of data from rankings and then from single websites, together
with their multiple classifications and in-depth analyses, have provided answers
which canbe summarized as follows:
1) The most relevant cases of actual merchants operating in the eCommerce
nowadays belong to United States, immediately followed by United
Kingdom and then, some steps away, by France and Germany. The rest of
the European continent and the Asian countries represent a still too
under-developed context with respect to the first players (especially in
comparison with the United States). The worldwide market is still in
general strongly characterized by traditional retailers having added
eCommerce as their secondary or even third business, in an attempt of
implementing a multichannel strategy in order to increase their often
already stable market share; however, most of them have already
understood the potential of mobile devices’ diffusion and have developed
applications to increase the degree of pervasiveness into the market. Most
relevant actors in the actual context still belong to already strongly web
developed sectors of Clothing and Informatics, but other more recent
industries such as General and Grocery sectors are moving forward.
2) The portion of merchants performing deliveries in which the e-fulfillment
process lasts less than twenty-four hours at worldwide level corresponds
to an almost 46 percent of all the eCommerce merchants; of course this
value changes depending on the geography: it is a bit higher in the US
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
168
continent (52 percent), balanced a lower value in the Asian continent (38
percent). The European context, if United Kingdom is excluded, reports an
amount of cases not far from the one of oriental countries (37 percent),
but if adding the British merchants (which provide fast services in the 88
percent of national cases) the overall situation of Europe moves close to
the worldwide average value (reaching a 48 percent). Again United
Kingdom and United States provide the highest quantity of cases of
interest. However splitting these cases into more precise time windows
needed for delivery service provision, we find out that most of really fast
initiatives (i.e. the ones taking less than six hours) do not have a precise
country of belonging as they mainly are few sporadic cases or pilot
projects spread in almost all the global territory; instead interesting to
notice is the fact that while most of initiatives in American and European
countries relate to next day options, the most developed trend in the
Asian geographies is the one of same day deliveries.
3) Some of the insights got in order to answer to this question have been
already reported below. We can add that while for next day deliveries no
significant differences among countries can be found (excepted for the fact
that Dot Com next day players are in limited number in Asia and in the
US, while they constitute a more significant portion of the European
market), same day deliveries differentiate themselves according to the
country of development: indeed, while United States and Europe see a
limited diffusion of these delivery options, Asian countries led by India
report a huge development of same day services. In addition, while almost
all cases of interest can reach only a local coverage, in the United Kingdom
and in some Asian countries (mainly China and Japan) some merchants
are able to offer also more spread options that reach a more national
coverage.
4) The main sectors interested by fast initiatives in general are Clothing and
Informatics, but we can observe some dedicated trends according to the
country and the delivery timing. In fact, for what regards same day
deliveries, while in the US and Europe overall we can mainly find projects
in commodity sectors of recent development (such as Grocery and Others)
Asia provides a higher amount of examples belonging to sectors such as
Informatics and General, that in the other countries have experienced a
precedent development but then have often remained stuck to the next
day delivery timings. Additionally, some sectors comprehend merchants
that are able to cover higher distances with their fast delivery services
(maybe due also to the peculiarity of items transported), which are
Grocery sector in the UK context and Informatics industry in the Asian
continent.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
169
5) The most delivery services increase their speed, the most we can observe
that retailer leave the recourse to outsourced logistics operators in favor of
internal infrastructures properly developed for providing a more
personalized and controlled service; another interesting trend which
ensures a certain speed of the overall e-fulfillment process avoiding big
investments is represented by the crowd-sourcing model application, but
it remains quite under-developed, with a relevant presence only in the
United States. For what concerns vehicles utilized in transportation, vans
(or refrigerated vans in the case of grocers) are leaving the ground to
lighter and faster means such as bicycles and/or motorbikes, especially
individually owned ones for the crowd-sourcing cases. Few cases of major
interest can be found (one of use of electric bicycles and the other project
with drones), but they only represent an almost irrelevant amount of pilot
and testing projects under development.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
170
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Lee H.L., Whang S. (2001). Winning the Last Mile of E-Commerce. MIT
Sloane Management Review. USA.
- Punakivi M., Yrjola H., Holmstrom J. (2001). Solving the last mile issue:
Reception box or delivery box? International Journal of Physical
Distribution and Logistics Management. Finland.
- Kamarainen V., Saranen J., Holmstrom J. (2001). The reception box
impact on home delivery efficiency in the e-grocery business. International
Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management.
Finland.
- de Koster, R. (2002). Distribution structures for food home shopping.
International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics
Management. Netherlands.
- Delaney-Klinger K., Boyer K.K., Frohlich M. (2003). The return of
online grocery shopping: A comparative analysis of Webvan and Tesco's
operational methods. TQM Magazine. USA.
- Tarn J.M., Razi M.A., Wen H.J., Perez Jr A.A. (2003). E‐fulfillment: the
strategy and operational requirements. Logistics Information
Management. USA.
- de Koster, R. (2003). Distribution strategies for online retailers. IEEE
Transactions on Engineering Management . Netherlands.
- Mitrovic-Minic S., Laporte G. (2004). Waiting strategies for the dynamic
pickup and delivery problem with time windows. Transportation Research
Part B: Methodologies. Canada.
- Lasserre F. (2004). Logistics and the Internet: Transportation and location
issues are crucial in the logistics chain. Journal of Transport Geography.
Canada.
- Boyer K.K., Hult G.T.M. (2005). Extending the supply chain: Integrating
operations and marketing in the online grocery industry. Journal of
Operations Management. USA
- Lunce S.E., Lunce L.M., Kawai Y., Maniam B. (2006). Success and
failure of pure-play organizations: Webvan versus Peapod, a comparative
analysis. Industrial Management and Data System. USA.
- Scott J.E., Scott C.H. (2008). Online grocery order fulfillment tradeoffs.
Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on
System Sciences. USA.
- Gagliardi, J.P., Ruiz A., Renaud J. (2008). Space allocation and stock
replenishment synchronization in a distribution center. International
Journal of Production Economics. Canada.
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
171
- Cho J.J.-K., Ozment J., Sink H. (2008). Logistics capability, logistics
outsourcing and firm performance in an e‐commerce market.
International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics
Management. USA.
- Gong Y., De Koster R. (2008). A polling-based dynamic order picking
system for online retailers. IIE Transactions. Netherlands.
- Song R., Cherrett T., Mc Leod F., Guan W. (2009). Addressing the last
mile problem: Transport impacts of collection and delivery points.
Transportation Research Method. UK
- Ghiani G., Manni E., Quaranta A., Triki C. (2009). Anticipatory
algorithms for same-day courier dispatching. Transportation Research
Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review. Italy
- Hu K.-Y., Chang T.-S. (2009). An innovative logistics model for multi-
channel retailing. Journal of the Chinese Institute of Industrial
Engineers. China
- Hu K.-Y., Chang T.-S. (2010). An innovative automated storage and
retrieval system for B2C e-commerce logistics. International Journal of
Advanced Manufacturing Technology. China
- Agatz N., Campbell A., Fleischmann N., Savelsbergh M. (2011). Time
slot management in attended home delivery. Transportation Science .
Netherlands
- Runciman B. (2011). Do IT yourself? ITNOW: Oxford Journals. UK
- Durand B., Gonzalez-Feliu J. (2012). Urban Logistics and E-Grocery:
Have Proximity Delivery Services a Positive Impact on Shopping Trips?
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences (Seventh International
Conference on City Logistics, Mallorca, Spain) . France
- Xiao H., Qian J., Tang X. (2013). B2C e-commerce vehicle delivery model
and simulation. Information Technology Journal. China
- Vanelslander T., Deketele L., van Hove D. (2013). Commonly used e-
commerce supply chains for fast moving consumer goods: comparison and
suggestions for improvement.. International Journal of Logistics
Research and Applications. Belgium
- Sareen H. (2013). Once refined, same-day delivery will be commonplace.
Wired. USA
- Morganti E., Seidel S., Blanquart C., Dablanc L., Lenz B. (2014). The
Impact of E-commerce on Final Deliveries: Alternative
Parcel Delivery Services in France and Germany. Transportation research
Procedia. France
- Morganti E., Dablanc L., Fortin F. (2014). Final deliveries for online
shopping: The deployment of pickup point networks in urban and suburban
areas. Research in Transportation Business and Management. France
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
172
- Wang X., Zhan L., Ruan J., Zhang J. (2014). How to choose "last mile"
delivery modes for E-fulfillment. Mathematical Problems in
Engineering. China
- Gruber J., Kihm A., Lenz B. (2014). A new vehicle for urban freight? An
ex-ante evaluation of electric cargo bikes in courier services. Research in
Transportation Business and Management. Germany
- Cleophas C., Ehmke J.F. (2014). When Are Deliveries Profitable?:
Considering Order Value and Transport Capacity in Demand Fulfillment for
Last-Mile Deliveries in Metropolitan Areas. Business and Information
Systems Engineering. Germany
- Ehmke J.F., Campbell A.M. (2014). Customer acceptance mechanisms for
home deliveries in metropolitan areas. European Journal of Operational
research . USA
- Visser J., Nemoto T., Browne M. (2014). Home Delivery and the Impacts
on Urban Freight Transport: A Review. Procedia - Social and Behavioral
Sciences (Eight International Conference on City Logistics, Bali,
Indonesia). Netherlands
- Ducret R. (2014). Parcel deliveries and urban logistics: Changes and
challenges in the courier express and parcel sector in Europe — The French
case. Research in Transportation Business and Management. France
- Hausmann L., Herrmann N.-A., Krause J., Netzer T. (2014). Same-day
delivery: The next evolutionary step in parcel logistics.
McKinsey&Company. Germany
- Xu R., Liu X., Xie Y., Wang F., Zhang C., Yang Y. (2014). Logistics
scheduling based on cloud business workflows. Proceedings of the 2014
IEEE 18th International Conference on Computer Supported
Cooperative Work in Design, CSCWD 2014. China
- Kumagai J. (2014). A day in the life of digi-key. IEEE Spectrum. USA
- Wang J.J., Xiao Z. (2015). Co-evolution between etailing and parcel express
industry and its geographical imprints: The case of China. Journal of
Transport Geography. China
- Koster F., Ulmer M.W., Mattfeld D.C. (2015). Cooperative traffic control
management for city logistic routing. Transportation research Procedia.
Germany
- Li Y., Deng D., Demiryurek D., Shahabi C., Ravada S. (2015).
Towards fast and accurate solutions to vehicle routing in a large-scale and
dynamic environment. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. China
- Zu Q., Sun B. (2015). Optimization of order picking work flow at the e-
commerce logistics centers. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. China
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
173
- Tsamis N., Giannikas V., McFarlane D., Lu W., Strachan J. (2015).
Adaptive storage location assignment for warehouses using intelligent
products. Studies in Computational Intelligence. UK
- Wang Y., Zhang D., Liu Q., Shen F., Lee L.H. (2016). Towards enhancing
the last-mile delivery: An effective crowd-tasking model with scalable
solutions. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and
Transportation Review. China
- Sun Y., Wei K., Qiao Z., Wen J., Jiang T. (2016). A personalized service
for scheduling express delivery using courier trajectories. Proceedings -
2016 IEEE International Conference on Web Services, ICWS 2016.
China
- Savelsbergh M., Van Woensel T. (2016). City logistics: Challenges and
opportunities. Transportation Science. USA
- Schrotenboer A.H., Wruck S., Roodbergen K.J., Veenstra M., Dijkstra
A.S. (2016). Order picker routing with product returns and interaction
delays. International Journal of Production Research. Netherlands
- Liu L., Li K., Liu Z. (2016). A capacitated vehicle routing problem
with order available time in e-commerce industry. Engineering
Optimization. China
- Harrington T.S., Singhai J., Kumar M., Wohlrab J. (2016). Identifying
design criteria for urban system last-mile solutions -A multi-stakeholder
perspective. Production Planning and Control. UK
- Saskia S., Marei N., Blanquart C. (2016). Innovations in e-grocery and
Logistics Solutions for Cities. Transportation research Procedia.
Germany
- van Duin J.H.R., de Goffau W., Wiegmans B., Tavasszy L.A., Saes M.
(2016). Improving Home Delivery Efficiency by Using Principles of Address
Intelligence for B2C Deliveries. Transportation research Procedia.
Netherlands
- Yu Y., Wang X., Zhong R.J., Huang G.Q. (2016). E-commerce Logistics in
Supply Chain Management: Practice Perspective. Procedia CIRP. China
- Lee H.L., Chen Y., Gillai B., Rammohan S. (2016). Technological
disruption and innovation in last-mile delivery. Stanford Business School.
USA
- Li J., Huang R., Dai J.B. (2017). Joint optimisation of order batching and
picker routing in the online retailer’s warehouse in China. International
Journal of Production Research. China
-
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
174
SITOGRAPHY
- http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/verticalweb/asia500_2013
- http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/verticalweb/europe500_2013
- http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/verticalweb/top500_2013
- http://www.geekwire.com
- http://www.retaildive.com
- https://techcrunch.com
- http://www.macrumors.com
- http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com
- https://www.internetretailer.com
- http://www.twincities.com
- http://money.cnn.com
- https://www.retailmenot.com
- http://fortune.com
- http://uk.businessinsider.com
- http://luxurylaunches.com
- https://www.timeout.com
- http://chb44.com
- https://www.retail-week.com
- http://www.lineaires.com
- http://retailanalysis.igd.com
- http://postandparcel.info
- https://www.wizishop.fr
- http://locationinsider.de
- https://www.deutsche-startups.de
- https://www.modaes.es
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk
- http://internetretailing.net
- http://www.postaltechnologyinternational.com
- https://www.theguardian.com
- http://gadgets.ndtv.com
- http://www.thehindu.com
- https://yourstory.com
- https://www.shoppirate.in
- http://www.medianama.com
- http://www.gadgetsnow.com
- http://www.business-standard.com
- http://thebridge.jp
- http://www.newsonjapan.com
- http://www.enterpriseinnovation.net
FAST LOGISTICS IN THE B2C eCOMMERCE: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW
175
- http://www.chainstoreage.com
- http://www.alizila.com
- http://www.prnewswire.com
- http://www.innovativechina.com
- http://blog.a1express.com
- http://mengnews.joins.com
- http://www.kejorahq.com
- https://www.logisticaefficiente.it
- http://koreabizwire.com
- http://english.hankyung.com
- http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com
Additionally, all the single websites of the retailers present in the rankings
have been browsed and deeply investigated.