Home-based parcel deliveries: Consumer and logistics patterns from retail digitalization

Abstract

The paper investigates the current retail paradigm shift by looking at the emerging distributional strategies and practices of e-commerce firms, including the changing landscape of city logistics. It is based on a long-term survey of home deliveries in a large residential apartment building that tracks daily parcel deliveries by carrier. Empirical evidence from this delivery point survey is used to substantiate retail digitalization trends, which have resulted in changes in the distribution pattern with the growth of home deliveries. The growth of the delivery footprint in terms of the space consumed by parcels within buildings waiting to be picked up by their consignees is becoming evident. Further, major online retailers are undertaking vertical integration strategies, such as having their own delivery arrangements, which is reflected in the shift in the relative share of carriers used for home deliveries. The survey provided concrete trends in terms of temporal frequency of deliveries on an annual, weekly, daily, and hourly scale.