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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the “last mile” delivery link between a hub and spoke distribution system and its customers. The proportion of retail, as opposed to non‐retail (trade) customers using this type of distribution system has been growing in the UK. The paper shows the applicability of simulation to demonstrate changes in overall delivery policy to these customers.

A case‐based research method was chosen with the aim to provide an exemplar of practice and test the proposition that simulation can be used as a tool to investigate changes in delivery policy.

The results indicate the potential improvement in delivery performance, specifically in meeting timed delivery performance, that could be made by having separate retail and non‐retail delivery runs from the spoke terminal to the customer.

The simulation study does not attempt to generate a vehicle routing schedule but demonstrates the effects of a change on delivery performance when comparing delivery policies.

Scheduling and spreadsheet software are widely used and provide useful assistance in the design of delivery runs and the allocation of staff to those delivery runs. This paper demonstrates to managers the usefulness of investigating the efficacy of current design rules and presents simulation as a suitable tool for this analysis.

A simulation model is used in a novel application to test a change in delivery policy in response to a changing delivery profile of increased retail deliveries.

The purpose of this study is to investigate Western and Central European consumers and web retailers with respect to the importance and accessibility of delivery information online prior to purchase.

To investigate the importance and accessibility of delivery information online, a survey was conducted of 715 internet consumers from the UK, Hungary and the Czech Republic to explore how important they rate online delivery information. In addition to this, retailing web sites from leading retailers in the UK, Hungary and the Czech Republic were content analysed in order to establish the extent to which they provided online delivery information.

The research identifies that consumers rate delivery pricing guides, delivery guarantees and delivery schedules as the most important delivery information they expect online prior to purchase. However, content analysis of retailer web sites reveals that many retailers do not adequately provide information about how they “guarantee product delivery”.

It is recommended here that prior to purchase online retailers should make detailed delivery information more accessible to consumers (e.g. pricing guides, timing schedules, etc.) and should consider using delivery service guarantees to assure consumers of delivery service standards and retailer responsibilities.

This paper makes a decisive contribution to e‐shopping behaviour and online retailing by providing insight into why visits to retailing web sites may not be followed up by purchase. This insight results from an examination of an often neglected area of the online buying process, namely “order delivery and fulfilment”. By examining the expectations of e‐consumers across Europe it investigates the role access to delivery information can have in managing customer delivery service expectations and in building trust in online retailers.

Technologies for the delivery of financial services, such as ATMs, home banking and other self‐service media, are having a profound impact on the design of retail banks' delivery systems. The results of an empirical study based on a probability sample survey of 117 US retail banks, in which the channels of delivery for typical banking products are investigated, are presented. Several of the basic assumptions of a conceptual framework depicting the relationships between service contents characteristics and service delivery channels are tested. Specifically, this article considers how banking services (transactions and enquiries) generally vary according to the type of delivery channel emphasised by the bank for its target market (industrialisation level) and according to the number (span) of delivery channels available to the customer. It also shows the relationship between these two key factors in delivery system design, industrialisation and span.

This study associated consumers' food choice motives and socio-demographic characteristics with their attitudes and consumptions towards food shopping with four e-commerce modes: business-to-consumer (B2C), online-to-offline delivery (O2O Delivery), online-to-offline in-store (O2O In-store) and New Retail. It also explored consumer preferences for specific food categories within the four e-commerce modes.

An online survey was administered to 954 participants from three Chinese cities: Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Descriptive analysis and linear regression were used in the data analysis.

The following food choice motives (FCMs) and socio-demographic characteristics had a significant effect on food e-commerce attitudes and/or consumption, with some or all of the four e-commerce modes: Taste Appeal, Value for Money, Safety Concerns, Quality Concerns, Processed Convenience, Purchase Convenience, Others' Reviews, City, Gender, Household Size, Age, Income, Occupation and Marital Status. Consumers also have different consumption preferences for food categories in the four e-commerce modes.

This is the first study to associate consumer FCMs and socio-demographics with their e-commerce attitudes and consumption regarding food in four e-commerce modes: B2C, O2O Delivery, O2O In-store and New Retail.

With the vigorous development of the e-commerce delivery service industry, delivery service has become an important factor for e-tailers to obtain the market competitive advantage. However, how to choose the best delivery service strategy is a difficult problem for e-tailers in practice. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of delivery service on e-tailers and online platforms.

Based on the Stackelberg game, the research study establishes and solves three models, namely dual self-supporting delivery service model, dual third-party delivery service model and differential delivery service model.

The results show that when the self-supporting and third-party delivery cost coefficients are all small, no matter which delivery service providers the competitor selects, the e-tailer selects delivery with a lower service fee. When the self-supporting and third-party delivery service fee are all low, no matter which delivery service providers the competitor selects, the e-tailer selects delivery with a smaller service cost. Both service fee and service cost determine the choice of e-tailers' delivery strategy. When the commission rate is moderate, both e-tailers are willing to choose the self-supporting delivery strategy, but the platform only prefers to provide self-supporting delivery to them with a lower delivery service sensitivity coefficient.

This paper analyzes the optimal delivery service strategies for e-tailers to compete with competitors, and explores the impacts of parameters for e-tailers and online platforms in their decision-making. The findings provide valuable implications for relevant practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of final delivery solutions on e-shopping usage behaviour by modelling their interaction across residents living in different neighourhoods with availabilities of different facilities, including automated parcel stations (APSs), collection and delivery points (CDPs), and the direct-to-home delivery stations of parcel express firms (PEFs).

The study is based on a survey on e-shopping behaviour and delivery awareness. A mixed structural equation model is used to predict the interactions among availability of final delivery facilities (AFDF), level of satisfaction with delivery services and e-shopping usage after controlling individual socioeconomic attributes and retail environment.

Compared with AFDF, individual socioeconomic attributes are the most influential factors contributing to e-shopping spending and frequency. Improving AFDF has only a slight effect on e-shopping spending, while a larger impact on e-shopping frequency and perceived satisfaction to delivery services is observed. The quantity of PEF delivery stations has a relatively large influence on e-shopping usage but the effects of APSs and CDPs are not as strong as expected.

The causality between final delivery solutions and e-shopping behaviour can be further tested by using social experiments or longitudinal data.

All findings will help business and public policy decision makers to derive a balanced and effective deployment of final delivery solutions, which is also referential for other emerging markets similar to China.

This study theoretically contributes to the international literature by examining the heterogeneous effects of final delivery solutions on different aspects of e-shopping engagement.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the carbon intensity of “last mile” deliveries (i.e. deliveries of goods from local depots to the home) and personal shopping trips.

Several last mile scenarios are constructed for the purchase of small, non‐food items, such as books, CDs, clothing, cameras and household items. Official government data, operational data from a large logistics service provider, face‐to‐face and telephone interviews with company managers and realistic assumptions derived from the literature form the basis of the calculations. Allowance has been made for home delivery failures, “browsing” trips to the shops and the return of unwanted goods.

Overall, the research suggests that, while neither home delivery nor conventional shopping has an absolute CO₂ advantage, on average, the home delivery operation is likely to generate less CO₂ than the typical shopping trip. Nevertheless, CO₂ emissions per item for intensive/infrequent shopping trips by bus could match online shopping/home delivery.

The number of items purchased per shopping trip, the choice of travel mode and the willingness to combine shopping with other activities and to group purchases into as few shopping trips or online transactions as possible are shown to be critical factors. Online retailers and home delivery companies could also apply measures (e.g. maximising drop densities and increasing the use of electric vehicles) to enhance the CO₂ efficiency of their logistical operations and gain a clearer environmental advantage.

Both consumers and suppliers need to be made more aware of the environmental implications of their respective purchasing behaviour and distribution methods so that potential CO₂ savings can be made.

The paper offers insights into the carbon footprints of conventional and online retailing from a “last mile” perspective.

E-commerce businesses have been undergoing rapid development for the last five years in the United States and for the past two years in Europe. This sustained growth illustrates the existence of a demand for this type of service, particularly among the youth. Beyond the startup phase, e-commerce companies are continuing to generate significant losses, which point to organisational defects, the most serious being logistic support to this business. Analysis of the e-commerce issue is delicate, given the haziness of the activity's perimeter. E-commerce startups offer services similar to traditional mail-order, and consumer retailing is not clearly stating its objectives in creating its own e-commerce sites.

Logistics is not an organisational technique that is adapted to the rapid and unpredictable changes that e-commerce is experiencing today. Logistics related problems in e-commerce vary according to the type of commercial activity involved, but they are often considerable and sometimes result from the precipitation with which these activities were set up.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a research exploring the important strategic elements and their prioritisation for e-retailers’ home delivery logistics process efficacy improvement.

The research was completed through focus group, survey and importance-performance analysis.

The research identified, confirmed and prioritised a set of explicitly important strategic elements currently deemed important by e-retailers for ensuring the efficacy of their home delivery logistics process in Chinese marketplace, and also referential to the other similar emerging marketplaces.

The research contributes positively to the enrichment of the theoretical knowledge pool of e-retailers’ logistics performance improvement.

The research findings guide/inform the strategy development and implementation for e-retailers entering and/or operating in Chinese marketplace. And the findings can also be referential to the e-retail strategy development for entering and operating in other emerging markets similar to China’s. This point is particularly meaningful for those e-retailers that want to expand the outreaching and increase the popularity of their businesses in the global marketplace.

Corresponding to the much needed further research on e-retailing home delivery performance improvement, the research provides findings that add substantial new insights into the field, with a particular focus on China, as one of the emerging developing marketplaces.

Limited use of containers; government intervention in the control of deliveries; the creation of a National Pallet Pool; the development of automated warehousing; these are some of the developments in physical distribution which are seen likely to happen, in varying degrees, by a number of manufacturers and retailers involved in a research project sponsored jointly by Cranfield and the IGD. Primary purpose of the project was to establish ‘cause and effect’ relationships between changes in retailing and developments in physical distribution, and the method adopted for obtaining the forecast was the Delphi technique — the first time this has been applied to any aspect of corporate planning. This article discusses the background to the project, examines the Delphic method in some detail, and pinpoints the project's principal findings.