Do you have an experience of shopping online? I believe majority of people’s answer to this question is “yes”. According to Statista.com,” the worldwide business to consumer e-commerce sales amounted to more than 1.2 trillion U.S dollars in 2013.” However, the explosive-pace expansion of e-commerce intensifies the competition between online retailers. As the growth of e-commerce, consumers also intend to be more impatient—they want to receive their order fast. So despite the quality and diversity of products, online retailers also need to work on improving the delivering speed. For online retailers, it is a race for time with its’ rivals.
For example, in U.S, many retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Macy’s etc. are competing for delivering the online orders to customers faster. So how do they improve their shipment efficiencies?
Online retailers’ strategy is to build more warehouses to meet customers’ demand. Large warehouses enable retailers to manage and deliver packages in an efficient way. To be more specific, more warehouses can store more items and its advanced sorting facilities allows retailers to manage orders effectively. I also want to note that Amazon is using about 30,000 robots in 13 warehouses to save packaging time.
What’s more, retailers also use sophisticated software and algorithms to help them make decisions. Software can calculate the cheapest, quickest way to deliver online orders. And when I was shopping online, I saw online retailers provide several shipment choices (e.g. free shipment for 5-7 days, if you want to get your package, you need to pay extra fees). This is a wise idea which can satisfy different customers’ needs and reduce the pressure of delivering. Another good thing is that many retailers provide services to help customers to track their order. They upload tracking information to let customer know the precise location of their packages, and therefore minimizing customers’ impatience.
The coming Christmas holiday is a new challenge for online retailers, hopefully they can deliver holiday gifts faster this year.
Resources:
U.S. retailers race to deliver holiday gifts faster this year
“E-commerce” http://www.statista.com/markets/413/e-commerce/