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Did £250m worth of online shopping really fail to reach consumers last year?

DeliveryX

A shocking figure has been revealed this week which will be hard for UK e-delivery professionals to ignore. More than £250 million worth of online shopping is estimated to have gone missing or not been delivered to shoppers in the UK in the last year. The worrying finding comes from research carried out by Direct Line Home Insurance.
The headline stat is that with 89% of UK adults now shopping online, around 3.6 million Brits have had packages they ordered online go missing in the last year.

Direct Line said Opinium Research interviewed a UK nationally representative sample of 2,011 people. Of these 728 people have had packages go missing, which as a percentage of the population equates to 18,429,514 people.

Everybody needs good neighbours

An interesting finding was that 496 out of 2011 asked for packages not to be left with neighbours, which as a percentage of the population equates to 12,556,368 people. They cited not trusting neighbours (14%) while 45% did not want to burden their neighbour with parcels.

Industry reaction

We asked industry leaders for reaction to the findings. Things can only get better is the view of Jason Tavaria, Head of Shutl. “It’s interesting research but things are improving by giving consumers more control over delivery slots and parcel tracking. From a trade perspective having more information about consumers delivery habits will also help reduce this and increase first time deliveries by couriers.”

David Saenz, UK General Manager of Stuart, the software platform and on-demand logistics solution, sees the findings as a stark warning. “In today’s market, where consumers are driven by instant gratification and a desire for convenience above all, delivery is becoming an integral part of the customer journey; yet too often it is an afterthought,” he said.

With UK online retail sales set to reach £62.7bn by 2020, retailers need to ensure they are living up to consumer expectation and offering a delivery method that is as convenient as the rest of their shopping experience. “The answer is on-demand, real-time trackable delivery,” said Saenz. “This not only provides businesses full control of their customer journey, it also ensures that the consumer has a precise, fast and flexible delivery solution. Those retailers that don’t offer this service can expect to suffer. For consumers, when delivery goes wrong – be it the wrong goods, non-delivery or late items – it is the brand that will face the consequences.”

Failure in focus:

  • Around 3.6 million Brits have had packages they ordered online go missing in the last year
  • More than 18 million people have had packages go missing or undelivered in the last five years, worth an average £68 per package
  • One in five (22%) shoppers have had more than one package go missing in the last five years, while one in 20 have had five or more packages undelivered
  • For one in 10 online shoppers the average value of their absent package was £300.50

Further reading:

Delivery solutions: Driving home delivery growth

Final mile tie-up sets sights on first-time delivery failure

Time to seize ownership of the last mile customer experience

Read More

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