Managing household freight: The impact of online shopping on residential freight trips

Abstract

Freight transport management and planning traditionally relies on freight transport models. However, e-commerce has changed the way freight is transported and requires a paradigm shift in such models. In contrast to conventional purchases in physical outlets, there is a spatial and temporal disconnection between the purchase and the reception of goods bought online. While traditionally the shopper brings home the purchases, the courier, express and parcel (CEP) sector must bridge this leg for the online retail channel by delivering the parcel to the household. These new type of freight trips have been ignored in the literature on freight modeling. Given the increasing number of urban freight trips destined for households, this omission implies significant errors when demonstrating transport impacts, identifying potential innovations, or assessing policy initiatives with these models. Therefore, we develop a framework that demonstrates how households' online consumption translates into freight trips. Three key factors in this framework seem to determine the magnitude of freight traffic originated by household's online shopping: (i) consumer shopping behavior, (ii) the supplier network and distribution system designed by the online store, and (iii) the fragmentation of the CEP market and the density of the delivery network. The identification of these three key factors provides a framework for policy action to mitigate the impact of household freight.