The growth of e-commerce has increased urban freight transport, bringing negative externalities of emissions, pollution, noise, congestion, and habitat loss. There is a visible effort to make the urban last-mile (LM) deliveries more sustainable, mainly in the environmental aspects; however, the related literature lacks a synthesis of the up-to-date research trends and available solutions. This paper reviews relevant literature following SRL methodology in terms of topics related to green LM deliveries on the e-commerce market in urban areas, and identifies trends and the research gaps in this field. In addition, current research topics and existing solutions within the e-commerce market, which increase its environmental sustainability are presented. The findings provide an accurate and comprehensive synthesis of research in green LM e-commerce deliveries in cities, identify current and emerging interests of researchers worldwide, and discover areas requiring further studies. The topics of ICT and smart solutions, customer behavior, and performance assessment certainly seem to be underestimated in the current research. In practical terms, it is a source of knowledge and guidelines on the current developments regarding the existing solution for the LM e-commerce deliveries in the urban area, which might help local governments, freight operators, and other stakeholders of last-mile logistics to improve their sustainability.

Research background: A rapidly developing e-commerce market and growing customer expectations regarding the speed and frequency of deliveries have made the last mile of the supply chain more challenging. The expectations of e-customers increase every year. They choose those companies that deliver goods faster and cheaper than others. A significant group of customers in Poland still selects home delivery. Many of them frequently return products to the retailer. These expectations and behaviour pose a challenge for the transport companies to deliver parcels to individual customers soon after the purchase, sometimes even on the same day. In addition, increasingly frequent deliveries contribute to environmental pollution, congestion, and accidents, as well as more expensive deliveries. Purpose of the article: The paper aims to identify e-customers? preferences and assess their impact on sustainable last-mile delivery (LMD) in the e-commerce market. The authors have also identified factors influencing e-customers? behaviour to make last-mile delivery more sustainable. Methods: The conjoint analysis was applied to evaluate a set of profiles defined by selected attributes in order to investigate the overall preferences for the profiles created by the respondents to the survey. Findings & value added: The segmentation of e-customers according to their preferences connected with last-mile delivery was presented. The added value of the paper is the presentation of the methodology to assess the impact of customer preferences on sustainable last-mile delivery. The obtained results may contribute to the formulation of recommendations for e-commerce and logistics companies regarding the preferences of e-customers to improve the sustainability of last-mile delivery.

The paper presents the research project implemented at Wrocław University of Economics and Business led by Eng. Maja Kiba-Janiak, Ph.D., Prof. of WUEB, financed by the National Science Centre in Poland, granted based on the decision number 2018/31/B/HS4/03711. The project answers the challenges created by the dynamically growing e-commerce market. Attractive purchase prices, low cost, short time, and convenient delivery places motivate consumers to shop online, which is a challenge for e-trade services and transport companies. Meeting the expectations of e-clients in terms of delivery of the purchased products leads to congestion, pollution, and road accidents. The project is the conceptualization of a model of sustainable city logistics in the field of last-mile delivery and the returns on the e-commerce market, including the tools stimulating stakeholders to change their preferences in terms of the last-mile delivery and goods return, making them more sustainable (environmentally, socially and economically).