Abstract
Surges in e-commerce sales represent a huge challenge for urban freight transport. Parcel lockers constitute a valid solution for addressing the challenges home deliveries imply. In fact, eliminating courier–consumer contact (also relevant for health-related issues, as made evident by the COVID-19 pandemic) and delivering in fewer predefined places might help coping mechanisms for missed deliveries substantially. Furthermore, this option enables consolidated shipping and reduced delivery trip costs. This paper analyses and compares consumer preferences for alternative collection strategies. It investigates home delivery vs. parcel locker use and forecasts their future market shares. This is performed based on both customer socio-economic variables and the attributes characterising these alternative logistic fulfilment strategies. The case study considered tests upon a stated preference survey deployed in the city of Rome. The investigation specifically targeted young people (i.e., population under 30 years) since they represent early adopters. Discrete choice models allow both quantifying the monetary value of parcel lockers attributes (i.e., willingness to pay measures) and estimating the potential demand for this innovative delivery scheme. Results show that distance and accessibility are the main choice determinants. Furthermore, there is an overall high propensity to adopt parcel lockers. This research can support policymakers when implementing such solutions.
Highlights
The second part illustrates and discusses the results from the MNL, reports the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) attributes, and forecasts market demand for various scenarios distinguished by different incentive, distance, and accessibility-levels as well as the consumer socio-economic/behavioural characteristics
The results provided in this paper support the decision to include Parcel lockers (PL) as a medium-term key action to improve the logistics sector in the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) for the city of Appropriate PL density considerations are pertinent for the private sector
This paper investigates e-consumer delivery choice, focusing on PL attributes in comparison to the status quo scenario (HD)
Summary
The share of e-commerce doubled total global retail sales in the period from 2015 to 2020 rising from 7.4% to 14.6% [1], and global online shoppers rose from 18% to 53%, with an annual turnover growth of 19.3% [2]. The COVID-19 outbreak strengthened this global trend since new consumers, products, and retailers have embraced e-commerce due to health-related considerations it still remains a minority practice [4]. Older people have started to shop online more thanks to its ease and convenience. This has happened while shopping online for food, groceries, personal hygiene products and sports equipment has drastically increased. Nowadays, stores operate as collection points for online purchases (i.e., click-and-collect), as drop-off point for returns, and as microfulfilment centers for faster, more cost-efficient, and greener product deliveries (so-called ship-from-store) [5]
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